Monday Night - Captains of the Clouds

Comments

[Mark Collins]

Fun movie, lots on it here:
http://www.vintagewings.ca/VintageNews/Stories/tabid/116/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/203/Captains-of-the-Clouds--the-making-of-a-BCATP-Classic-Movie.aspx

Excerpts:

"...The film would be the first motion picture by a Hollywood company to be shot primarily on location in Canada...

The film was shot at many different major locations in Eastern Ontario. The military training scenes were shot at several different locations including No. 2 SFTS at Uplands [Ottawa!], Central Flying School at Trenton, No. 6 Bombing and Gunnery school at Mountain View and No. 1 Manning Depot in Toronto. The early bush flying scenes of the movie were filmed near North Bay, Ontario in and around the large lakes and wild rivers of the Canadian wilderness...

At Uplands outside of Ottawa [in those days barely], Brian MacLean (James Cagney) chats up an air gunnery student while cameras roll and the prop winds down. The scenes were shot at Uplands, but they depict No. 1 Bombing and Gunnery school, Jarvis. 739 Rolls Royce Merlin powered Fairey Battles, considered underperformers, were taken from frontline service and like Cagney, relegated to gunnery training platforms in Canada with the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan..."

In fact the Battle, a light bomber doing the banking manoeuvre out of formation in the trailer, was a terrible combat aircraft, obsolete by the time it took on the Wehrmacht in France, 1940. It suffered swingeing casualties.
http://www.raf.mod.uk/history/faireybattle.cfm

Mark
Ottawa

[Richard Anderson]

All that Mark and you failed to mention Billy Bishop's cameo.