Tag: military aviation

The graphic novel ” Un tournage en enfer “.

Post author By Stanley
Post date 6 January 2024

The graphic novel “Un tournage en enfer: au cœur d’Apocalypse Now” takes us right to the heart of the creation of Francis Ford Coppola‘s famous film, brought to the screen in 1979. As the director points out, [my translation] “[…] we were in the jungle. There were too many of us. We had access to too much money and too much material, and little by little, we all went crazy…”.

It didn’t start well. Right from the start, the director was unable to convince well-known actors to get involved in his film. In turn, actors such as Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Robert Redford and James Caan refused to join the adventure. Coppola continues his research and interviews.

As readers, we go behind the scenes of the production and hear from those close to the filmmaker. Filming begins in the jungle of the Philippines, even though Coppola has no idea on how the film will end. This would haunt him throughout the production, causing him sleepless nights when he was already quite exhausted.

A page from the graphic novel "Tournage en enfer - Apocalypse Now". — A page from the graphic novel “Tournage en enfer – Apocalypse Now”.

Cost overruns followed, and the pressure on the director from financial backers increased. He was asked to complete his film as quickly as possible, which he proved unable to do. Coppola came to guarantee the required funds by pledging to pay off the debt himself if box-office receipts failed to reach $40 million.

In addition, it was taken for granted that the U.S. government would provide the helicopter gunships required for the film’s action. But in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the interest of American politicians in such requests waned. The director had to turn to the then President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, to obtain helicopters and personnel, in return for certain fees and compensation. But these aircraft sometimes left the scene on Marcos’s orders to go hunting for the regime’s enemies. Coppola was falling behind again…

They thought that Harvey Keitel would be the ideal actor to play Robert Duvall. Many sequences later, the obvious becomes clear: the man just didn’t cut it for a number of reasons. On the verge of disaster, they urgently contacted Martin Sheen and beg him to replace Keitel. Multiple scenes had to be reshot with the new actor, and the delays and associated costs continued to mount.

All sorts of other pitfalls awaited the director and his crew throughout the shoot, including the language barrier with the Filipinos and a storm that destroyed the set. The widespread use of drugs and alcohol by staff and helicopter pilots didn’t help matters either.

The mosquitoes, the heat and Coppola’s constant demands took their toll on the actors. Martin Sheen fell seriously ill, and his brother had to be used for some of the secondary scenes. Rather than use only actors to simulate deaths, a staff member went to the morgue and returned with a corpse. This prompted the arrival of the police force, and the problem was solved with generous sums of money.

There were many other factors that delayed the end of the shoot and increased costs. Marlon Brando’s demands were a case in point. They managed to get him back on set for an extra day, provided that he received $70,000 more than planned.

Shooting finally ended in 1977. The team chartered a private plane to fly 381 kilometers of original film to the United States. Editing the film proved to be an ordeal. There was too much material to analyze. In 2001, Coppola presented a modified version of his original 1979 production. In 2019, he finally delivered a final 182-minute version, Apocalype Now “Final cut” , more than forty years after the initial release.

Earnings met the director’s expectations, and he ultimately won his bet. In all, the film generated $140 million from a total budget of $30 million.

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Title: Un tournage en enfer – Au cœur d’Apocalypse Now

Author: Florent Silloray

Publisher: Casterman

ISBN : 978-2-203-21653-2

Graphic novels and comics

Warbirds : B-25 Mitchell : Tonnerre sur Tokyo

Post author By Stanley
Post date 21 August 2023

This comic book, published in 2023, is the third in the Warbirds series, published by Editions Soleil.

On April 18, 1942, a few months after the Pearl Harbor raid, sixteen B-25B Mitchell bombers took off from the new Hornet aircraft carrier for a surprise attack on five Japanese cities. The mission was known as the “Doolittle Raid“.

These machines, which were not designed to operate from an aircraft carrier, would not be able to reach their targets and return safely to port for lack of sufficient fuel. All the pilots were well aware of this, and volunteered.

The fleet of sixteen aircraft, commanded by Jimmy Doolittle, successfully achieved its objective of confusing the enemy and showing that Japan remained vulnerable to surprise attacks. The Japanese wondered how it was possible that American bombers could have reached and hit their country. Where did they take off from? They know that the B-25 Mitchells were not designed to take off from an aircraft carrier, and that they were incapable of landing on one.

The genius of the operation laid in the combination of a number of highly risky decisions which, taken together, took the enemy by surprise. Firstly, as it was impossible to land the planes on the Hornet, they were installed with a crane, knowing full well that they would never return to the ship.

In addition, the captains were trained to take off over distances unthinkable for them, using a technique pushed to the extreme. The ship sailed at high speed into the wind, improving the headwind component so essential for such perilous maneuvers.

The pilots had to be extremely skilful to keep to the departure trajectory on a platform that moved from left to right in the middle of a storm. Buildings on the Hornet’s side had to be avoided at all costs, and the available gap between the wing tip and the ship’s tower was no more than two meters. Despite all the obstacles, all the B-25s managed to take off. It was to be a one-way mission to Japan.

Doolittle piloted the first B-25 to take off from the carrier. He had only a very small portion of the deck to work with, as there were still fifteen other bombers waiting their turn to take off. The second pilot to leave the deck narrowly avoided a water landing, as the aircraft sank slightly and a landing gear wheel touched the water. But the plane gained just enough speed to stay airborne.

Bombers and crews suffered different fates once the bombing raids on Japanese targets had been completed. The authors conclude: “The raid destroyed 112 buildings and killed 87 people, in about 6 minutes. […] The destruction of 15 of the 16 B-25s, unable to reach Chinese airfields for landing, was nevertheless to be deplored, the 16th B-25 having landed safely in the USSR. Also to be deplored was the accidental death of three airmen (planes 3 and 6) and the capture of 8 others (planes 6 and 16) by the Japanese, 4 of whom never returned home, 3 having been executed as “war criminals” and the 4th having died in captivity. Worse still, the Japanese took revenge on the Chinese, who had helped all the surviving airmen, by organizing the massacre of some 250,000 civilians in the Zhejiang and Jiangxi provinces then under their control. This was to leave its mark…”.

Landing and takeoff tests on an aircraft carrier, the Forrestal, were also made decades later for a C-130 Hercules. I tried to repeat the experience in flight simulation. The flight can be found in the “challenging virtual flights” section of my blog. As the Forrestal is not available in virtual mode, I used the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise.

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Title: Warbirds: B-25 Mitchell: Tonnerre sur Tokyo

Authors: Richard D. Nolane and Vladimir Aleksic

Edition : Soleil/D. Nolane/Aleksic

ISBN : 978-2-302-09745-2

Aviation Pioneers War

Books : Hans Baur : J’étais le pilote de Hitler.

Post author By Stanley
Post date 26 January 2021

The book “J’étais le pilote de Hitler” tells a true story that was originally published in 1957. The 2020 French edition, presented and annotated by Claude Quétel, improves our understanding of Hans Baur, one of the founders of Lufthansa in 1926, Hitler‘s personal pilot, but also a high-ranking Nazi SS officer and a close friend of the Führer.

The information offered by Hans Baur is of great interest. Early in Hans Baur’s career, the pilots doing what he did were called aviation pioneers. At the time, planes contained virtually no air navigation instruments that could assist a pilot flying in difficult weather conditions. The Alps are tricky to fly through in good weather, so it gets a lot more challenging in bad weather and in a poorly equipped plane. If we add the freezing conditions, engine failures, cabins that are not heated and that are not equipped with devices providing supplemental oxygen to pilots, then there are flights that would be considered something like an “exploit”. This aspect of the book is therefore very interesting.

I also liked all of Hans Baur’s anecdotes about Hitler’s demands on him. Being a pilot for the Führer was no small task. Hitler had very high expectations regarding the performance and the punctuality of his personal pilot, and the latter certainly demonstrated extraordinary abilities to satisfy his superior.

Where we have to be wary is that we are still dealing with an SS pilot, who was a member of the Nazi organization before Hitler took power. We have to question his personal values and what he voluntarily neglected in his book. The regular massacres carried out during Barbarossa Operation in Russia, or the elimination of six million Jews, are not discussed, as the SS pilot maintains he was never involved in politics. He carried passengers without asking questions, but he had chosen Nazism as a political movement. When you are invited to Hitler’s table on a daily basis and are therefore part of his inner circle, it is clear that the Nazi represented by Hans Baur is speaking about more than piloting.

The experience in Russian prisons is described as inhuman by Hans Baur, who has been there ten years. He talks about the transport of German prisoners in cattle cars, very bad food, etc. But I couldn’t help but wonder what planet he lived on to denounce his condition as a prisoner while ignoring the treatment the Germans imposed on the Russians and all the people who were deported and massacred. The Einsatzgruppen were not altar boys. Moreover, Claude Quétel also questioned this remark from Hans Baur, adding that “although very harsh, the living and working conditions in the Soviet camps have nothing to do – as we sometimes read – with those of the German concentration camps.”(p.381).

There are also some inaccuracies and sometimes falsehoods that Claude Quétel does not hesitate to point out. Sometimes these are trivial errors resulting from poor memory. However, other important facts are downright inaccurate. As in this passage where Baur says that Hitler decided to attack Russia four weeks before the start of the war, which is not true. The conquest of the East and of more living space is specifically enunciated in Mein Kampf and is spoken of in a book written while Hitler was in prison in 1923 following a failed coup.

Conclusion

The book « J’étais le pilote de Hitler » is a very interesting book, one more about Nazi Germany. The history of Germany is fascinating and complex, from the time of the Holy Roman Empire to the present day. But it seems that it will always be the twelve years of the Nazi period that will achieve more success in bookstores.

Have a good read!

Click on the link for other books on war in my blog.

Click on the link for other books on aviation pioneers in my blog.

Title : J’étais le pilote de Hitler

Author : Hans Baur

Edition : Perrin

ISBN : 978-2-262-08168-3

Aviation artists quotes

Quotes from the book “The Man and His Art” by R.G. Smith

Post author By Stanley
Post date 13 May 2018

Front cover of the book "The Man and His Art" by R.G. Smith — Front cover of the book “The Man and His Art” by R.G. Smith

« We had no television in those days, so my evenings were spent reading history or drawing, mostly airplanes”.

“[Lieutenant Commander Beaumont] influenced my life as an artist. […] He participated in Operation Deep Freeze in Antarctica. Where others saw only white and blue in this frigid area, Beaumont found wonderful color and conveyed same in his art. He added alcohol to his paints to prevent them from freezing as he worked in sub-zero temperatures for 30 minute intervals, retreating to a warmer area before going out again”.

“It was Beaumont who taught me composition, color balance, and how to look at a subject and translate the visual image to paper or canvas”.

“Beaumont emphasized it wasn’t necessary to reproduce an exact replica of a scene as long as the end result achieved dramatic impact”.

“Bob Poole taught me […] how to grey down vivid colors. He also taught me that by blending colors, I could add motion to aircrafts and add subtlety to harsh lines”.

“Understanding light and its effects is obviously critical to an artist […]. For instance, as the descending sun caught the side of a rusty tanker, it created a starkly bright copper tone. We learned that if we didn’t try to emulate that color on paper within 30 minutes, the light would be lost, and the rich copper tone would quickly change to a dingy, lifeless brown”.

“Aspiring artists want to know how to draw and paint, but very few want to take the time to learn”.

“Refrain from ever being satisfied with your work. Never stop rehearsing you craft. Every painting is another step in an endless learning curve. Achievement comes from hard work, discipline, and a constant program of practice and learning”.

“Accuracy requires study and thorough knowledge of your subject. […] Generally, more than 50 percent of the time invested in a painting went into research”.

Back cover of the book "The Man and His Art" by R.G. Smith — Back cover of the book “The Man and His Art” by R.G. Smith

“As to planning a picture, my approach usually entailed making several sketches of ideas for the scene I wanted to create before deciding on the final composition”.

“Create the background first, knowing beforehand where you intend to place the aircraft, which should be the last phase of your painting”.

“My criticism of much of aviation art today is that many artists feel they must paint every rivet on an aircraft, or every line on a ship. It often appears as though some artists cut their aircraft from a photograph and paste it on the background”.

“[…] the eye and the brain do most of the work, connecting the dots and lines. In other words, you don’t have to include every detail, just a suggestion of detail”.

“Study the works of artists you admire, or whose style you want to emulate”.

“Some artists only see an airplane as a mechanical object. As a result, their depiction of them is mechanical, stilted portraits of aircraft rather than a picture with character, motion, or some measure of dramatic quality”.

“I’m not a complicated man and it has never taken much in the way of material things to make me happy. Most of my pleasures have come from my family, my career, my hobby, my books, and my friends. The wonderful experiences and opportunities that came my way were frosting on the cake”.

Title: The Man and His Art. R.G. Smith / an Autobiography (with Rosario “Zip” Rausa)
Author: R.G. Smith with Rosario “Zip” Rausa
Copyright: 1999 by R.G. Smith
Edition: Schiffer Publishing Limited
ISBN: 0-7643-0755-X