The other day I noticed a
post on the Internet Archive's blog about a man named Craig Smith who was attempting to preserve a collection of stock sound effects. Figuring that he might know where the Stuka dive siren audio originated, I reached out. The response I received in return was, to paraphrase, "no, but I know someone who does". That someone was Ben Burtt. Ben provided me with a thorough and detailed explanation and history of not only the famous Stuka audio, but also two other famous sound effects. It was so good, in fact, that I have elected to copy-pasted it below:
Ben Burtt wrote:
One of my recording passions over the decades of recording is the collection of vintage aircraft sounds. I used sounds of many warbirds for spaceships in Star Wars and have employed many aircraft for use in my sound design for Indiana Jones, Red Tails, etc.
You are right about numerous cliches in Hollywood’s aviation movies. However, the sound used in “Airplane” is not the Stuka. More about the Stuka in a minute. The sound in “Airplane” is a composite mix of an airplane passby backwards (for the beginning of the dive), an artificially accelerated steady wire whine from a biplane (likely from 1933’s King Kong at RKO), and a pullout that is once again a passby of (an unknown type) aircraft. It was made for the 1944 20th Century Fox film “Wing and a Prayer.” Since the composite sound had a beginning, middle, and end that could be conveniently cut to fit the length of any airplane diving (or in distress), the “Wing and a Prayer” dive became very popular and got copied or traded to all the other studio sound departments. Hence it showed up frequently for decades in movies and on tv and became one of the cliches familiar to the public.
On the other hand, the iconic Stuka siren dive also had much use as well and could be confused with the “Wing and a Prayer” dive because there is similarity. The Stuka sound is authentic. It was recorded by the Germans in 1941 for a feature film they made called “Stukas.” (You can see it on YouTube and it is quite a film). The sound effects (including some specific explosions) also showed up in a German short/newsreel called “Nordmark.” The British got ahold of this newsreel (as a war prize I suppose) and copied off the Stuka siren dive and the explosions and put them in a stock library. Sound editors in the UK started adding the sounds to “Guns of Navarone” and the early James Bond films. The Stuka siren was used in the Bond films for any aircraft in distress. They even used in for a helicopter going down in “From Russia With Love” and “You Only Live Twice.” I think later is was a jet in trouble in “The Spy Who Loved Me.”
I confess I used a bit of the Stuka to sweeten Tie Fighter fly-bys in the trench run just as an homage because I loved the sound. Even in the recent “Dunkirk,” despite the claim that they created new Stuka sirens…you can still hear underneath the sound of their new Stuka audio that original 1941 recording. You just can’t beat the original.
Just to complete the topic, there is yet another diving airplane sound that has a bigger history than either the “Wing and a Prayer” and the realistic Stuka. That sound is the Travelair bi-plane recorded for the 1930 version of “Dawn Patrol” at Warner Brothers. It has “screaming guy wires” when making high speed turns. That particular set of recordings was used in every Warner Brothers aviation epic from Dawn Patrol to Air Force, to God Is My Co-Pilot…you name it. It was featured prominently in the Road Runner cartoons and was used for every Mig going down in flames in “The McConnell Story.” It just became sound language that communicated what the public expected.
That is the esoterica from me. I’ve tried to get a good bi-plane strut wire whine but it has been a fleeting objective. I have heard it in brief spurts at airshows but never when I was recording. I have asked pilots if they can reproduce it but they say it means loosening the wires a bit so they will vibrate and nobody wants to take the risk. Consequently that sound is still on my bucket list. If you hear a plane that “sings”, let me know!
When I asked him how he learned all of this, he replied:
Ben Burtt wrote:
I was always interested in the history of movie sound effects and I especially collected data and interviewed vintage era sound people to figure out the creative provenance of iconic sounds. Aviation was always a priority. Along with a friend named Craig Barron, we did an aviation film festival at the Academy of Arts and Sciences 10 years ago in which we amassed quite a bit of audio and footage pertaining to Hollywood aviation history.
So there you have it! I haven't had a chance to search through the movie for the relevant clip, but as stated, the film
Stukas is indeed
available on YouTube.
I want to thank both Ben for the excellent response and Chris for putting me in contact with him. For anyone who, like me at the start of our conversation, is unfamiliar with Mr. Burtt, he is the man responsible for much of the sound design on many iconic movies franchises such as
Star Wars and
Indiana Jones as well as, ironically enough, popularizing the
Wilhelm scream. However, despite all of this, the fact I most appreciated when reading his
Wikipedia article is that one of his first amateur movies was filmed at Old Rhinebeck while working with none other than Cole Palen.
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