POOR LITTLE LAMBS

[Full Throttle]

You can pop these coordinates into google earth if you want to see where the old Indian Dunes dirt strip was where they did the filming:

34°25'18.56"N
118°38'12.42"W

[marine air]

The show was on the cusp of greatness. It had real WW II aircraft like the Corsair , P-38, C-47 and Duck. It had real combat footage. It had the hottest female nurses to ever wear a flightsuit. It had some real WW II Corsair pilots like John Schahfhausen flying the formations. It had the real Pappy Boyington giving advise and hanging around the set chatting it up. But it also had truly horrible writing. Sappy and even worse than Gilligan's Island. If it had been even as good as "Three's Company" it would have made it to syndication.
It's only watchable if you turn the volume all the way down.

[garbs]

I do remember one good line. Robert Conrad says, "I must have my head up and locked".

Yeah, I watched them all when they were new. I'm guessing Boyington never had a CO named "Colonel Lard".

[phil65]

"It's only watchable if you turn the volume all the way down."

Not during the opening theme song....

Phil

[CAPFlyer]

Also don't forget that it was the launching point for several careers both in front of and behind the camera.

John Laorroquette
Larry Manetti
Donald P. Bellisario
Steven J. Cannell
Mike Post (he got the gig based on 2 episodes of CHiPs) & Pete Carpenter

and not least - Steve Hinton

Oddly enough, I was listening to the Billy West podcast yesterday morning and he quoted the opening poem in full. Only thing I could think of was the theme song.

I have a Great Uncle (James O. Wilson) who worked as a Key Grip on the show (uncredited, as was common back then). Had some great stories of getting to fly for many of those aerial shots. Interestingly, they used the C-47 on several occasions for aerial shots when Tallman didn't have a B-25 available. Sadly, he's not in good shape these days, but I always enjoyed his stories about life on the set of shows like Green Acres, Black Sheep Squadron, and Hart to Hart, even if he never got screen credit for most of his work (he retired in the late 1980s just before full crediting of crew became common for TV). BTW - a lot of the dust and dirt you see on the equipment and people is real. That was one of the biggest problems for the Camera Department for many of the shoots because it was a fine dust that got in everything.

[Zac Yates]

Oddly enough, I was listening to the Billy West podcast yesterday morning and he quoted the opening poem in full.

Of all the places I post online, I never thought it would be WIX where I found another Billy West Podcast fan!

I never saw the show but I think it must have screened here as I'm pretty sure I remember my mother telling me about it. She would've been in her teens when it came out in the US, likely a year or two later it may have come to NZ.

[JohnB]

I'll second the kudos to Bellisario....who later co-produced Magnum, p.i., and cast Jeff MacKay on a recurring role.

He later did Airwolf and Tales of the Gold Monkey (again with MacKay and a Grumman Goose) and seems to have an affinity for aircraft.

Also, in addition to the a.c. listed above, the series featured the Tallmantz L-5 and a couple of P-51s....and of course the Tora, Tora, Tora fleet.
Plus, in one episode I recall a parked B-17 and other USAAF types at a scene set at another base.

[maxum96]

I never saw the show but I think it must have screened here as I'm pretty sure I remember my mother telling me about it. She would've been in her teens when it came out in the US, likely a year or two later it may have come to NZ.

Here's your chance

https://youtu.be/bY4dts4tBHM

[menards]

LOL! I've seen all the episodes.... Now some of the complaints...It falls in line with 70s TV programming. no, its not historically accurate. No, there were no navy nurses who wore charlies angels attire on fwd bases (maybe there was? I wasnt there...) However, the character Lt. Jeb Pruitt at 17 yrs of age was probably more akin to the true age of a Corsair pilot during the war than say larroquette was at 30 yrs old at the time of filming. Pappy was 31 while CO of the Black Sheep and considered "old", hence "pappy". Jeb Pruitt's story of falsifying records to join the Corps was prob an all common storyline during the war as well. If they remade the show, u would get CGI dogfights showing planes making unrealistic flight maneuvers like in Redtails.

[k5083]

For me as a kid, the revelation was that there were 4 or 5 Corsairs still flying.

Although most of the aerial footage of the series could be seen in the pilot episode/movie, with the bonus of the Tallmantz (now Weeks) TP-40 at the beginning.

There were also some memorable "guest" appearances such as the 2 P-38s that dropped in in the episode about Pappy's rivalry with a Bong-like character.

August

[JohnB]

For you too young to have read this when it first appeared in Flying magazine in 1977, here's a story by Gordon Baxter about the filming of the TV series, with great photos.
Also a pilot report on the Corsair by production test pilot and "Stick and Rudder" author Wolfgang Langewiesche.

https://books.google.com/books?id=Seu8y ... &q&f=false

The magazine's Executive Editor at the time was our very own WIX-er, Stephan Wilkinson.

[oscardeuce]

Link to the Billy West podcast please!

[Zac Yates]

http://billywestpodcast.com/

[JohnB]

Anyone learn anything from the Flying articles?

[menards]

Anyone learn anything from the Flying articles?

I've always read that the Corsair had superior dive performance over its counterparts, but first I've read about the characteristics about being unwilling to pull out of a dive. I guess it makes sense when you thinking about the physics of it all....that a lot of motor hanging out there.....and if your out-diving anything else ur certainly carrying a ton of speed...