Yes, but getting a message to a small, wandering company is different than getting a message to a stationary battalion of 1600 whose precise location is known with certainty. Sending the message by air makes a lot more sense in the latter case.
I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I read newspapers from 100 years ago today most mornings (from the Library of Congress Chronicling America website). I pretty much followed the war in real-time from the beginning and have read many war accounts. I say that just from the description, the plot sounds plausible from a historical perspective. Messengers, anywhere from individuals to small squads, were commonly used all over the front to deliver messages.
Also, flying over the front was by no means safe, and I don’t recall reading about air-dropping messages very much at all. Remember that aviation was still in it’s infancy, and commanders didn’t really have a good idea of what to do with it. Aircraft were primarily used for reconnaissance, and the fighter plane’s priority were recon planes, both attacking the enemy’s and protecting your own.
I believe this is covered by what I call “the John Ford Rule”.
One of Ford’s first big successes was the movie Stagecoach (WARNING: Spoilers for a 90+ year old movie!). Towards the end of the picture, there is a desperate chase of the stagecoach across the plains by Indians. When William S. Hart was asked his opinion of the movie, he pointed out that the Indians could have simply shot the horses and then picked off the passengers at their leisure. When the reporters took this critique to Ford, he had a simple reply as to why the Indians didn’t use this tactic: “it would have been the end of the picture”.
In any (sufficiently entertaining) motion picture, if this is the answer to a question that begins “Why didn’t they just…”, then it is covered by the John Ford Rule and exempt from penalty.
The Royal Flying Corps, back then.
They could have sent Speckled Bob.
If this was a realistic movie about WWI, they could have relayed the message to the battalion by shouting it. Even after a major advance, they would only be about fifty yards away.
I haven’t seen the film, so grain of salt and all, but how does it being a MacGuffin factor in here? The idea of a MacGuffin is an object that drives the plot, but whose nature is immaterial to the plot. In this film, the plot is getting the MacGuffin across No Man’s Land to an allied general. How they convey the object to its destination is the important part of the movie - if part of how they convey the object doesn’t make logical sense, that’s a legitimate flaw, regardless of what the object is.
That said, wars are big, messy, and chaotic. There’s any number of plausible reasons why they wouldn’t have access to an airplane to deliver the message in time. Ideally, these reasons would be mentioned in the film, but also, the general who sends the two soldiers on this mission isn’t going to bother explaining them to the grunts.
I don’t see it as a major plot hole. This was 1917 and who knows what means they had at their disposal for an objective like this.
How close was the nearest airfield? How do you communicate to a pilot where they have to go? Do you have a spare map of a country you’re not even from? Is the map cockpit size cause the ones the generals used seemed to be table size. Do you have time to draw a new better map that won’t blow out of an open cockpit? Can a pilot read a detailed map while flying? Powered airplanes had only been around 14 years. How developed was flight navigation at the time? What type of container is he going to make the drop in? How accurate of a drop can he make without hitting tall grass, trees, water? What if no one on the ground even sees the drop?
I think there’s plenty of reasons an airdrop message in a foreign country during war may not be the most feasible plan.
I agree, but the script kind of undermines that by having the general refer to aerial photographs when he explains the situation to the corporals.
BTW, another common way of sending a message like that in WWI was by pigeon.
“Our last functioning recon plane took these photos before being jumped by a German air patrol. They were barely able to make it back behind our lines before they crashed. I need you to deliver the message by hand!”
“The fuel convoy was supposed to be here yesterday, but it hasn’t shown up, so all our planes are grounded. I need you to deliver the message by hand!”
“The pilots shared a tainted pot of stew last night, and now they’re all shitting themselves to death. I need you to deliver the message by hand!”
“We didn’t have these new-fangled aero-planed in the Boer War, and I don’t trust them! I need you to deliver the message by hand!”
“We need you to deliver the message by hand! Pershing and I have a bet that you won’t make it!”
Alas, we see British planes in the air just a few miles from the message’s intended recipients.
I haven’t seen the movie yet, so maybe this is a dumb comment, but is it possible any airfield would be further for the runners to carry the message to than the nearby battalion? Based on the OP description the telegraph wires are cut so the group of soldiers that know about the trap would have to hand deliver The info wherever it ends up going. Weren’t airfields typically miles behind the trecnches?
Seems a bigger plot hole might be that they only send one small group to deliver this critical message. I would think multiple groups dispatched at different times in different routes toward the same target would be more likely to succeed, but then there’s less at stake for the group being followed by the plot.
But they need planes where they are, not where they’re trying to get to.
There was a scene were the runners were told to make sure you have witnesses when you deliver the message to Colonel Mackenzie because otherwise he may ignore the orders. Couldn’t have accomplished that with a plane or a pidgeon.
That’s good!
I was actually kicking that one around. It’s easy to take for granted all the neat stuff you can get up to in an aircraft because air travel has been an option our entire lives. In the film it was still new tech, fraught (for real and in the imagination of someone with no time to properly research the topic) with gremlins and…fuggit. This has got to get done, so put the letter into the hands of someone with an interest in getting it there, and tell them nobody else is doing it so they must not fail. And you do this with 9 other pairs of dudes. They can find out about each other later and you’ll be happy to hear them telling you what for.
Alternatively, 1,600 men in WWI was a drop in the bucket of overall losses–4 days’ worth for the Brits. Maybe it was just a token effort and no big hash if the mission failed. So the commander gives the other battalion’s welfare about 8 seconds of consideration and half-asses a warning to them, more out of duty than desire.
Speckled Jim.
As for the Ford Rule, I have this to say:
If your whole movie would fall apart because of this one thing, maybe you should just make a different movie.
I also haven’t seen the movie but my understanding is that the information they’re passing on was attained from aerial reconnaissance. So the information obviously passed through an airfield on its way to the runners.