Howard Hughes film – "Hells Angels"

The end segment of the film is worth the purchase price alone – there is NOWHERE ELSE where you’ll see authentic WW1 biplanes duking it out like that!

Not only that, but the actors are actually piloting the planes themselves. When was the last time that happened?!

Sadly, I have no info on who took it, or where, but a picture does better than words here……

The ‘Gotha’ was a Sikorsky, as noted before. IIRC, a crewman was killed when it was crashed.

(Mentioned here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell%27s_Angels_(film) )

A number of the models from the film are held and are on show at the Sun n Fun museum in Florida, including from memory a ‘Wichita Fokker’.

Best accurate (I know of) references to the film aircraft would be the work of Harry Woodman, who, IIRC, published a number of articles on it, IIRC in Scale Models in the 1980s, and elsewhere. Worth seeking out.

Absolutely superb film…. don’t recall seeing any of the Curtiss Jenny’s at the end of the film.

The Zeppelin scene is stunning, i’d love to know how they did it, where it’s coming down in flames then hits the ground looks very realistic

Just a little further information; quoting from the non-fiction novel ‘Richthofen’ by William E. Burrows:

“Hughes assembled 50 airplanes, including a Gotha bomber, into the largest non-governmental air force in the world, and based them on a complete period airdrome near Van Nuys, California….Ten camera planes were used to photograph what, by December 1927, had become 87 combat airplanes.”

I know this doesn’t answer your question one iota, but it’s a nice little aside!

Extracted from my sources.

Types included 5 Thomas-Morse Scouts S4.C (as “Camels”), 3+ SE.5, Sikorsky S-29 (“Gotha”), this crashed killing a stuntman) 8 Fokker D.VII, 2 Jennies (“Avro 504”) Snipes?, Camels? DH.4. Many Travelair 2000/4000’s (“Fokker”) Many crashes both planned and accidental, 3 of them were fatal. DH.4, Travelair camera plane. Models.

Havent seen it for a while but from memory SE5’s and DVII’s