(an early Clint Eastwood/Richard Burton flick)…really bugs me. I maintain that there were no helicopters used during WWII. Am I wrong?
Thanks
Q
I don’t recall a helicopter in that flick? Let’s see, they parachuted in to Germany, hiked up the mountain, rode the cable car down the mountain, hopped in a bus, then onto a plane, nope, don’t recall a copter.
OTOH. What really bugged ** me** about that one was , here you had Burton, Eastwood, “Mary” and the one guy they rescued, holding at bay an entire (well, I don’t know the term for it company? brigade? shrug - a whole lotta soldiers), Eastwood - not a scratch, “Mary” didn’t even loose her eyeliner when she jumped in the river, the guy they rescued? not a bruise. Burton? got hit by one bullet that grazed his hand and he manfully wrapped a handkerchief around it and went on to jump on the cable car.
It was toward the end of the movie and it was under a tarpaulin, remember?
Q
I remember, they came off the mountain, rode the school bus, shooting half the German army in the process, drove said school bus into an airport, where they timed it perfectly to get picked up by the allied plane that had just landed. Who was trying to get into a copter?
Sorry, wring: I may be mis-remembering the flick, but I could have sworn it was WHERE EAGLES DARE and they were gonna use the helicopter to escape the castle. I will now add an embarrassed smiley to show that if I made a mistake I am sorry to have wasted your time and the bandwith.
:o
Q
The helicopter was a Bell 47. It was the first helicopter to receive certification in the United States and, as can be guessed by the designation, appeared in 1947.
There were helicopters in WWII. One of the first was demonstrated indoors (either at the Olympics or at a Party rally) by Hanna Reich. It had two rotors on outriggers. There was a propellor in front; but that was used to cool the engine, not for propulsion. If it was demonstrated at the Olympics, it was in 1936. If at a Party rally, then it may have been 1938. Sorry, I don’t feel like researching it at the moment. But you can look up Hanna Reich. (Or Reisch.) The Germans also had a helicopter called, IIRC, the “Kricket”. This one had two rotors that meshed above the cockpit. There were powered models and towed models, and they were used in a limited fashion for Naval observation.
The U.S. also used a helicopter in WWII. This was the Sikorski R-4. It was used in a rescue mission to retrieve an injured pilot (I believe) in the Pacific Theatre. It wasn’t an easy mission. Ground forces had to make their way to the injured person, and then hack a landing zone out of the jungle. IIRC, the operation took about a month. I don’t remember the year this occured.
The wartime helicopters were very underpowered. They were also quite rare when Where Eagles Dare was made. The Bell 47 was “kind of” contemporary with the action (only a few years after the movie was set) and it was reliable (many are still in regular use) and powerful enough to carry the passengers for the movie. And there were helicopters around. They were just very few and far between. Many war films used U.S. aircraft and armor since originals were so hard to obtain. The confusing thing about this film is that very few people know that there were helicpters in the time period depicted.
I LOVE this place! Thank you very much for your reply! Very informative, even without the research.
Q
An impossible helicopter appearance would have been right in keeping with that movie.
What struck me as the most ludicrous part was the decision by Burton et al to risk bringing along the traitorous British spies as they were escaping. “Don’t make a sound fellas as we sneak out of this fortress, we’ll shoot you if you do, whereas if we all make it back to England you’ll be hung.” “OK, we’ll be weally weally quiet.”
Here’s a page with a photo of the Focke-Wulf FW-61 that Hanna Reich flew in 1938. http://www.geocities.com/avionesymujeres/autogiroaleman.htm
This site http://www.helis.com/default/ has a movie of it flying. Click on the “Pioneers” link on the left side of the page. The FW-61 is about half way down under “1936”. The link to the footage is there.
I was wrong about the other German helicopter being the “Kricket”. It was actually the Flettner Fl-282 “Kolibri” (“Hummingbird”). Here’s what this site http://www.rotorhead.org/flightline/airframe.htm has to say about it:
The painting with the quote is very small and doesn’t show any detail. Here’s a better picture: http://www.helis.com/Pioneers/h_fl282f.shtml
Here’s a page with photos of the Bell 47. You might remember them from MASH*. http://www.hyperscale.com/reference/bell47gmcd_1.htm
Oh, and as for the helicopter appearing in the film, I remember it landing in the courtyard of the castle. A VIP got out, but I don’t remember who it was. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the film.
I’m currently reading Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer. On a footnote on page 537 of the paperback version, Speer writes of Karl Hanke’s escape from Breslau:
A few month’s later he waged the battle of Breslau without regard for human lives or historic buildings and even had his old friend the mayor, Dr. Spielhagen, publicly hanged. Then, as I heard from the designer Flettner, shortly before the surrender of Breslau he flew out of the besieged city in one of the few existing prototype helicopters.
This occured in early 1945.
Monday, May 30 th, 2016 7:52 CT
Am currently watching " Where Eagles Dare ".
First site of said helicopter, landing in the castle courtyard when Burton and Eastwood are decending the mountain. I did a search of helicopters used in WWII . All helicopters listed to Germany during that period look nothing like the one in this movie. In fact none of there arsenal listed a bell of any kind. Also all in Germany’s inventory resembles airplane fuselage without wings, sporting a rotor and tail fin, ( read rudder).
Germany did (barely) have the multi-passenger capable FA 223 Drache transport copter, of which only 11 flew.
Ah, someone else channel surfing to TCM.
Yes, I noticed it was a fairly modern copter considering that in Korea the USA was still flying fallen oil derricks. They disabled it by killing the pilot, the only thing that makes sense. That German helicopter in the link looks sort of like a powered autogyro.
the most unrealistic thing other than clockwork dynamite bombs that can be tossed 30 feet onto rock without going “boom” and clockwork is flawless every time - Germans suck at marksmanship, even with multiple machine guns, while female agents (on our side) are able marksmen; and the skin of an old bus can stop machine gun bullets, and a jeep running parallel to an aircraft taking off cannot machine gun it to serious mechanical damage…
The most unrealistic thing my wife found with the movie was the concept of Clint Eastwood as “the youngster”.
Was it being piloted by a zombie?
[15-year-old nitpick]
Or Reitsch (which seems to be how she actually spelled her name).
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As I said back in 2001 (incidentally, every one of my links no longer works) it was common to use Allied equipment as stand-ins for German equipment. After the war there was little left of German materiel. In various movies you’ll see P-51s standing in for Messerschmitt Bf 109s, T-6 Texans for Focke-Wulf FW-190s, or whatever else was available standing in for whatever was needed. America half-tracks got a black cross and became German half-tracks. Americans drove Sherman tanks and the Germans drove something else (I’m thinking Pattons). The Great Escape actually had a Messerschmitt in it – but it was a 108 and it was playing a 108 liaison aircraft. (The other planes in the scene were T-6s.) I recall seeing Bf 108s pretending to be 109s in at least one other movie.
The first movie I remember (i.e., it may not be the first – only the first I remember) making an effort to accurately depict enemy aircraft was Battle Of Britain (1969), which used HA-1112 Buchons, Spanish-built licensed versions of Bf 109s, as well as CASA 2.111s, that were licensed-built versions of the Heinkel He-111. Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) used American trainers were modified to look like Japanese fighters and attack aircraft.
Nowadays they can create images of any aircraft or other machine they want on a computer. Unfortunately while the people are very good at drawing accurate images, they have no idea how airplanes fly.
On preview
Xema: Nitpick noted.
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It was on last night. I watched the last hour or so. No helicopter. Lots and lots of Germans with really bad aim though.
Yep, definitely saw the Bell helicopter landing in the courtyard and some higher-up (General? Field Marshall?) getting out. Weird that there would be a (modernish) helicopter in a WWII movie, and odd they’d land in a pretty small courtyard.
But that’s only part of the problems that made me switch away from this movie at various times (ignoring plot issues or plot believability): it’s a 1970 movie and everyone - all these military people - have 1970 haircuts - haircuts that probably wouldn’t have been allowed in the military even in the 1970 US/British military, and certainly not in the 1940s German army.
Then there’s the language, which is a harsh contrast to the movie that immediately preceded it on that day, Guns of Navarone. In Guns, German is spoken by Germans and Greek by Greeks. Granted, it sometimes made it difficult to understand the dialog with precision, but it worked wonders for immersion. But in Eagles, a film where they made a point to say in the initial briefing that all the infiltrators spoke fluent German, no one spoke German - not even the Germans (except sometimes, like when yelling at the troops; but not in the bar scenes or pretty much any other scenes).
And that’s before we get into the multitude of continuity problems.