Aero Vintage Books

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"I hit the dummy and felt something lock the elevators...With the elevators jammed, I cranked on enough trim to go out to sea, turn around with ailerons...and landed at nearly cruise speed...(and found) the hand of the dummy locked in the elevators."

Quote from "The Making of Catch-22" by Frank Tallman (Warbirds International, May-June 2008)

"The rest of the story" is here: http://www.aerovintage.com/catch22.htm
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Later, when that airplane was displayed at the Movieland of the Air Museum, they inserted the hand from the dummy between the elevator and horizontal stabilizer to show what happened, along with a story board explaining the whole thing. Just a little footnote from the filming but it is an interesting story.

This story is one of the reasons I keep coming back here. I'm always learning something new.

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... crosswinds and wake turbulence ...

Tallman on the mass B-25 takeoffs...

"The most unbelievably dangerous, nerve-shattering, mind-numbing experience I had ever been exposed to. To make a really exciting shot for the cameras, we cut the spacing between planes to about 150-ft

The plight of the aircraft half-way back in the takeoff stack is like a cork in a whirlwind and the full strength of the plane commander and copilot are necessasry just for the flight controls and the engineer is riding the throttles.

I led the takeoff and also rode back later in the pack and nothing in more than 30-years of flying prepared me for the hurricane battering I got from the B-25s ahead of me."

The wind usually blew 90-degrees off heading at a velocity that the pilots' handbook said was beyond the capabilities of the B-25."
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Tallman on the "M&M" night bombing ... (real night...no "day for night")

"Taking off to the sea in absolute numbing blackness, I experienced the most acute vertigo I have known in nearly 35-years of flying. It was minutes before I could turn with any facility...(coming back) into shore and turning inside a circle of mountains rising 800- to 3000-ft less than a mile from the runway, diving in on the runway at 200-kts and (heading) into brilliant arclights at ground level...

To help matters they blew up, literally, the base behind us."
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regarding the mass take-off, Just read the past month that this scene was filmed 12 times - each time they had to do it at the same time of day so all the footage would match.

Would be interesting if the outtakes from this movie could be released

How many massed takeoffs were needed to get the shot?

Pilot Stoney Stonich: four
Pilot Jack Biven: two
Pilot Frank Tallman: thirteen

For me, I'd put my money on Stoney's recollection, but you'd think it would be consistent.