| Title | Chain Lightning |
| Studio | Warner Brothers |
| Date Released | February 18, 1950 |
| Director | Stuart Heisler |
| Actors | Humphrey Bogart, Eleanor Parker, Raymond Massey |
| Aerial Coordinator | Paul Mantz |
| B-17 Filming Locations | Probably at the Lockheed Air Terminal, Burbank, California |
B-17s Identified
B-17F 42-3360 (N67974) (from Paul Mantz)
B-17E 41-9125 (file footage)
The Movie...
A bit of a cheesy romance story with Humphrey Bogart playing ace pilot Matt Brennan and Eleanor Parker playing the pretty girl Jo Holloway. Their paths first meet in England with Brennan as the ace B-17 pilot and Holloway as the pretty nurse girl. They meet again later when ace down-on-his-luck pilot Brennan is hired to help test a hot new jet fighter (actually a Mantz-produced remade P-39) and it's new fancy ejector pod thing and pretty girl Holloway happens to work for the company making the new jet. Several things happen later in the movie, but for our purposes here it is only important to note that the ace jet fighter pilot and the pretty girl are kissing in the last scene, and there are some B-17 scenes early in the film. Paul Mantz was the aerial coordinator, so he got to 1) use his war surplus B-17F in the film; 2) construct the hot new jet fighter from the parts of an old Bell P-39; 3) do a bit of stunt flying at the San Fernando Valley Airport and 4) probably cringe a bit when he saw the final results in the completed film.
Anecdotal
- Paul Mantz's B-17F, 42-3360, is known to have been in Chain Lightning and also probably appeared in Command Decision (1948). It's flight status with Mantz was probably limited to a ferry flight from Altus, Oklahoma, to Burbank, California, probably in 1946. It was never granted an Airworthiness Certificate by the CAA while with Mantz, and only received a civil registration number in March 1950, shortly before Mantz sold it to Owen Williams.
- The film utilizes a brief scene taken from Best Years of Our Lives depicting the RFC storage yard at Ontario AAF (now Chino Airport) showing rows of boneyard B-17s.
- There are two scenes using combat file footage: that of B-17E s/n 41-9125 landing and that of a B-17 in a one wheel landing that results in a gear collapse and skid to a stop, both taken from Eighth Air Force operations.
- From Craig Presler comes the information that Chain Lightning was written by Vince Edwards, a freind of Humpherey Bogart. He also, by the way, was Robert Mogan's bombardier on the B-17F Memphis Belle and his B-29 "Dauntless Dotty" later in the Pacific theater.
Buy this Movie!
Links
Acknowledgements
- Bruce Orriss' fine book When Hollywood Ruled the Skies
Based on the information available, this has to be Paul Mantz's B-17F 42-3360 dressed up as Naughty Nellie with nose art identical to that carried by the real Memphis Belle. Where this scene was filmed has not been confirmed, but it was probably shot at what was then the Lockheed Air Terminal at Burbank, where Mantz operated his Paul Mantz Air Services and kept most of his airplanes. The B-17 doesn't actually move for the scene; we first see it with engine number two running as two ground crewmen approach the airplane. Several flight crewmembers are then seen emerging from the aft entrance door and the move to the forward hatch to meet the other crew exiting the airplane.
Later in the same scene, pilot Matt Brennan (Humphery Bogart) is boosted up on his fellow crewmen's shoulders to give Nellie a few affectionate pats on her little backside. Note the second nose window has been replaced with a thick plate, but the nose gun mount is retained. Mantz picked up this B-17F in February 1946 from a group of 475 surplus airplanes purchased from the RFC at Stillwater, Oklahoma.
Shown after a supposed gear collapse, here again is 42-3360 with the crewmembers exiting out of the main entrance door and the waist gun window. Again, this scene was probably shot at the Lockheed Air Terminal in Burbank. The film makers evidently used the old "dig two trenches and roll the main gear of the B-17 down into the trenches to make it look like a belly landing" trick also used in 1000 Plane Raid in 1968.
Later in the same scene comes proof positive that Mantz's B-17F, s/n 42-3360, was used for the film as seen by the serial number barely in view in this video capture. This is quite obviously the original paint the airplane wore during its AAF service. Paul Mantz did not actually register this airplane with the CAA until after this film was shot in late 1949. It received the civil registration of N67974 on March 17, 1950. Shortly thereafter, it was sold to Owen Williams of California-Atlantic Airways, he the owner of many post-war B-17s. Williams later sold N67974 to a company in Bolivia and it was reportedly destroyed in a 1955 crash.
Shot at the San Fernando Valley Airport (now Van Nuys), this scene shows Mantz shooting down the runway in his mock-jet, reportedly in front of a JATO bottle. You can see the P-39 origins in the landing gear but a whole new airplane was built up that, actually, looks pretty convincing.