Flying Fortress (1942)

Interesting facts

Flying Fortress is a 1942 British black-and-white war film drama from Warner Bros. Pictures, produced by A. H. Soloman, directed by Walter Forde, that stars Richard Greene and co-stars Carla Lehmann, Betty Stockfeld, and Donald Stewart.

Production

Flying Fortress was made in the UK at Teddington Studios by Warner Bros. Pictures' British subsidiary. Teddington, one of the few British studios to operate during the Second World War, produced Flying Fortress as part of a series of patriotic films aiding the war effort.

These early Boeing B-17Cs were not quite ready for heavy combat, having been provided to the RAF by the US Army Air Corps. for training and patrol purposes, the result of the America's Lend-Lease Act. Lacking anything else at the time, the RAF pressed the aircraft into high-altitude daylight combat missions, with poor results. Eight of the original twenty B-17Cs were lost for a variety of reasons, before how they were utilized was changed.

The burning engine fire depicted at the conclusion of the film is based on an actual World War II incident. Sgt. James Allen Ward of the Royal New Zealand Air Force earned the Victoria Cross after he climbed onto the wing of his burning aircraft on 7 July 1941 to smother an engine fire that would have otherwise proved fatal.

Flying Fortress had its U. S. cable television premiere on Turner Classic Movies, 14 September 2007, during TCM's festival of 13 films made by Warner Brothers at Teddington Studios.

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