I just returned from seeing it again. Thats right second time today. My 16 year old son went with me this time. Great entertainment. We give it four thumbs way up.


This film has the official Billy Bones seal of approval

I'm glad you enjoyed it Stephen, and I'm looking forward to seeing it over my days off.

Ok folks let talk about the modeling aspect of this movie. First Even Eduard notes that the Vickers gun should be centralized for a type 17. Ask yourself why did the production design of these machines call for offset guns (like on the type 23) on the close-ups?

Maybe if the guns were centered you could not see the actor's face. Note in this image if he were using the gunsights his head would be over on the side of the cockpit. But the camera man has the actor's face centered in the crosshair sight to give us the impression that the pilot is using the gun sight.

Howdy Stephen

FINALLY!!.......I got to see this movie last night All I can say is "Wow!

I loved {almost} every second of it, right up to but not including the hollywood-required romance aspect of the film. I suppose Hollywood feels that romance acts as a story 'binding'agent or something {actually, I'm quite sure they stick it in there to simply increase the Gluts in the seat}
Anyway, I can't tell you how excited I was to see so many different types of aircraft depicted in the film I mean, how cool was it when the camera pulls back from a close-up of a guy with an oil can in his hand to reveal that he is actually on the wing of a german Gotha G.IV bomber in flight!! Yeaaaaaaaah! We even got to see a formation of Handley Pages as well. Dang, I think I would have had to shout out loud if a bloody Staaken appeared.....fortunately for the other audience members that didn't happen

Well, I could go on and on and on about this superb film {IMHO}, but suffice it to say that I will be making a return trip to the big, dark, room with all the seats in neat rows ala' our good JackFlash to see our 'Flyboys' take to the air at least once more..........

Tread.

I plan to catch a matinee sometime soon. Been looking forward to seeing it for a while. Glad to hear everyone praising rather than trashing (Like they did with Pearl Harbor). I love about 35 minutes of Pearl Harbor, well add some more for the English channel and the bombers over Tokyo. In the previews, all I see is white Nieuports and red DR1s. Any other fighters or colors present or is Hollywood giving us the "Red Baron" treatment here? I understand about seeing bombers and Zeppelins is cool, but what about variations of fighters?

Howdy Blaster76

As I said, there are a nice selection of aircraft making their appearance in the film, but as far as the engagements betwix the huns and the Escadrille aviators are concerned, it's pretty much a Neuport 17 vs, Fokker Dr.1 party. In fact, {and our good Jack Flash can help me out here} I kind of understand the french having the 17, but do all the germans have Dr.1's ??

The zeppelin scene is a real joy....haven't seen that much film footage devoted to a zeppelin since 'Hells Angels', and that film was made before the vast majority of any of us here were born!
The Gotha scenes were glorious as well, my only dissapointment with the scenes {and it's a small one} was, I was hoping they'd show the MG well on the underside of the Gotha's fuselage.

Tread out.

Well the die-cast models are here.

Flyboys readybuilt models

Links broken 2009

Greetings gents this is my second attempt to answer this my first didn't post for some reason. Here is the short version. There were only 320 Fokker Dr.I manufactured during the war. Only a select few units had more than 6. This amounts to Jasta 2, 4, 6, 11, 12, 14, 19, 26, 27 & 36. Of these only Jasta 11 used red alone and it was usually confined to the cowling, struts and wheel covers. MvR was the only one with all red Fokker Dr.I machines. There is some speculation but only three of these were all red at any time. ( He is known to have flown about eight that were assigne d to him and about ten more that were not directly assigned to him.)

Considering the CGI they used the mono colour was prudent. Note the Nieuports all were aluminum doped.

Howdy all,

I am most grateful for our good Stephens clarification on the Dr.I question...as usual it is both enlightening and full of additional information one can store away for rainy days when one {and I'm talking about me here } is attempting to sound 'smart'.

I thought there was a somewhat low volumne of Dr.I available in general, so your verification of that is heartwarming to my humble opinion of the facts. I guess in the grander scheme of the conversation it's a shame there weren't other german aircraft depicted besides the flashy triplane........what would you have liked to see more of Stephen?

Tread.

Ah dear Tread... in a perfect world portraying German aircraft

1917, their would have been Albatri! D.II, D.III , D.V and D.Va types. Then there would have been the Pfalz D.III and D.IIIa type.

In 1916 Fokker and Pfalz E.III, E.IV, Halberstadt D.III, D.V and Fokker D.II, D.III, and D.IV types.

And for the French in 1916 - 1917 not only Nieuport 17 types but Spad VII and XIII types.

There I go fantasizing again... Drizzle Drazzle Drizzle ...help me Mr. Wizard!

Here is Mr. Tony Bill's response to the all red all Dr.I query.

"...A last word or two (one hopes) about our red Dr1's: as you know, it was imperative that we keep the good guys and the bad guys separate and readily identifiable in the air. As even the most eagle-eyed of you will note, it's pretty hard even as it is to always know who's shooting who in our aerial battles. And I imagine that's very much as it was in WWI itself. What I wanted was two contradictory things: to keep the action clear for the audience while at the same time capturing the utter chaos and confusion that often reigned in the air war. I've been a student of the literature for decades and, much more than recreating any particular aircraft - red, green or polka-dotted (a paint job I really wanted to use!) - I wanted to give the audience the FEELING of that early aerial combat. I'm an aerobatic competitor and I know how boring aerobatics is to watch (the only audience at the highest level of competition - unlimited - is the other competing pilots). But when you're IN the airplane, the most basic maneuvers are exciting and often disorienting. And a disoriented audience needs all the help we can give them to keep the story straight.

But there's another, as yet undisclosed reason, for our red Fokkers: most of the film we had only one airworthy airplane! (There were very few available at any price or place.) We often had to strip and repaint it as well as change the markings overnight. To have multiple paintjobs and markings for a dozen or so Fokkers would have been another movie in itself. And since the German pilots are unidentified in our film, it would have served no purpose, other than an enormous expenditure of time and money, to distinguish them from one another, except for the two - red and black - aircraft that are characters in our story. Imagine the nightmare it would have presented our CGI artists; it probably would have taken another half year of work just to populate our skies with them..."

Howdy All,

Once again Stephen, thx for bringing to the table a hearty helping of info regarding the query in question at the moment. And I must say, I have to agree with both of the points you made...One:, that wouldn't it have indeed been glorious to have seen the plethora of aircraft you so kindly listed depicted in the film in some form or fashion. And, Second: the real world mechanics of having the task of portraying our "plethora" to the masses, and addressing the 'normal' audience expectations of what would be in the air in 1917. Because as we all know {or at least I sophmorically assume}, the vast majority of the unlearned viewing audience associates the rather infamous Fokker triplane with the germans of WWI, and the Sopwith with the allies. But, plugging the Neuport into the French side of the conflict, and mentioning and identifying the aircraft as such multiple times during the film will suffice for the audience.......................while on the other hand, the vast majority of us here at Armorama and other related sites are saddled with just simply knowing too bloody much about the engagement!

But, nevertheless........it was a TERRIFIC film!!

Tread out.

PostScript: What ever happened to the airplane smiley we were trying to get around here?..........just curious

hi guys,


for those of us in the UK the full size replica aircraft constructed for the film (Nieuport, Dr. 1, Sopwith 11/2 Strutter, Gotha forward fuselage) are all on display at the Manston History Museum down here in deepest Kent - having just come from there I can tell you this is well worth a visit because they look fantastic..!! ..especially the red Tripe of course ...I understand that some of the film was shot at RAF Halton and the production team was about to send all the props up in smoke after filming when they got a request from the Museum...sadly no-one here seems to know when the film is being released in the UK....

http://www.rafmanston.co.uk

There, there Stephen...... :-)
Soon enough you can make a complete, good film with nothing but computers and than you will have ALL the WWI fighters, bombers, reconnaissance or whatever that you want.....
You can even be the hero yourself too.....

some great images of the replicas here

http://www.jhs.flyer.co.uk/Flyboys%20@%20RAF%20Halton

Howdy again fellas,

First, thx for the great links And second, I am quite jealous that our good brothers across the pond are getting to see the props in the flesh....maybe us Yanks'll get lucky someday and they'll make a trip over here.....

As I said earlier, I really liked the film, so much so that I went and saw it again this evening for the second time. I got to see some of the detail I missed the first time.
I had a few questions as a result. I'll pose one in this post.
I noticed better this time all of the small differences in the paintjobs of the Neuports. My question is, were any of the paintjobs in the film accurate?
Aside from a couple of the obvious ones that is?
tia

Tread.

A friend of mine writer, Greg VanWyngarden wrote this.
"Dig that crazy three-hole cowling and the supersized engine. Of course, the crossed swords insignia is based on an actual emblem which adorned the Jasta 9 Albatros D.II of Vzfw. Köhler, as seen in a famous line-up photo. I suppose we should be thankful that the production team chose an actual WWI pilot's insignia - but, oh, I would have loved to see some CGI Albatros D.IIs instead of all the Dr.Is. Would have been much more chronologically appropriate. Greg"

This is from one of the film's pilots.

"There were actually two Triplanes used during the filming, the one just shown with the three cooling holes is an ex-Blue Max machine, with a Seimens engine from a Jungmeister, which was only used briefly. It hadn't flown in years and had some maintenence issues. The other one has a 180 Lycoming and is owned by the Real Aeroplane Company in Breighton, Yorkshire. It did the bulk of the Triplane flying for them filming, and was painted in Jacobs' colors originally, changed for the villian in the movie, and repainted red when required. We practically begged them to change the crosses, but for some reason the owner didn't want to do it, I think they thought the movie paint might be harder to get off than advertised. I think it was originally intended to leave that one black and use the other one for the red ones, but when we had trouble with the 2nd triplane the black one ended up being painted red when required and they had to deal with the movie paint all over after all, and it was a lot harder to get off than was thought.

The roman numerals I believe are to represent victory totals, so "crossed swords" had more than "black falcon", but was a nicer bad guy....

We pilots were a little worried that they were going to get carried away with decorating the Nieuports, but they ended up being just right for the task at hand. It was realised that with so many similar aircraft it could be hard to recognize who was who during dogfights, and so the topic of wing decoration came up. I suggested the Nungesser red-white-blue wing stripes, which they put on the Rawlings plane, and you can see that they looked at some WW1 books to choose some of the other emblems, like the "W" on Cassidy's Nieuport, copied from Harold Willis' SPAD, and the red bar across the top wing of Skinner's plane, which I believe was also copied from a real Nieuport.

The personal emblems on the Nieuports were vinyl stick-ons, which they changed regularly, giving me the chance to collect some souvenirs from the filming, which will decorate my hangar wall some day. The props guys were really busy all the time, changing the markings on airplanes, weathering them, and etc.

One of the really neat things there was the old lorries from the action vehicles guys (who were always the first in line at lunch time...), they were made from 1950s truck chassis with WW1 looking bodies built on them (and changed as needed), and to simulate the wheels with solid rubber tires they used idler wheels from old (1950s also, I think) tanks! The same guys had supplied tanks and other vehicles for "Saving Private Ryan", "Band of Brothers", "Sahara", and others. Lots of ingenious stuff going on on the set and at the studio."

He goes on to comment further.

"...I watched the clip again and it reminded me that the "Double R" marking on Rawlings' Nieuport is similar to Charles Dolan's monogram on his SPAD, probably not a coincidence.

Like a lot of us I have a tendancy to compare movies with what I know about the subject, maybe comparing it to other movies of the same genre is a better measure. "Hell's Angels", or how about "The Blue Max" with its lozenge Triplanes and Stampes and Tiger Moths. Both pretty good flicks to me, still. I did like how in "Flyboys" they got the gun levers right on the Nieuports, on the control stick, none of that "Blue Max" stuff. There is no towel scene though......"

..I must say I never even noticed that - it was such a thrill just being up close to real life replica Dr. 1 ....the engine was a great example of life-size modelling ...it looked realistic all the way up until you touched it ...and then you realised it was just ... circles of rubber

regards to Greg btw .. looking forward to his new Osprey title ...

Well folks here it is, from Eduards newsletter.


"...October does have another kit to mention. I touched on this back in September, and it is the Nieuport 17. It is in 1/48th, and a bit on the fictitious side. It also has a different boxart presentation, modeled after the Flyboys movie poster. This is a movie inspired by the exploits of the famous Escadrille LaFayette. For a bit of a change, we allowed ourselves to be inspired by the movie, and are boxing a threesome of models with camouflage schemes from the movie. The first is the 1/48th scale Nieuport 17. the other two will be in 1/72nd scale, the Fokker Dr.I, and an all-new Nieuport 17. This is the secret project I had eluded two last month, so there will be no misunderstanding. It should be clear to you, and not really much of a surprise, that this kit will also be released later in historically accurate schemes. We are also preparing the Ni-17, Ni-21 and Ni-23. Because progress is such a mean and unstoppable mistress, these kits will be better detailed than their old, original 1/48th scale counterparts..."

The test shot of the 1/72 kit.

Later today I have another ticket to go see the best film out. Thats right, Flyboys. Its great having grown kids that want to bribe their dear old dad. hah! Thats #6... The cinema people get so upset when you try to put tracing paper on the screen and get the zeppelin proportions...

Howdy again Stephen

Many thx for all of that input. I read every bit of it trying to glean as much insite to the filming process as I could.....interesting stuff.
And, as was said, I too missed the tri-holed Dr.1...sheeesh!!...these old eyes again

Hey.......in case anyone's interested, and/or needs some more Flyboys stuff {like me ;-) }.....here's a site for the brand new PC video game developed ffrom the movie.

[http://www.flyboysgame.com/]Flyboys[/url]

Dang!...messed up. Just copy and past this address

http://www.flyboysgame.com/

Looks like a pretty nice game. Quite a few of the WWI-based flight sim guys are still playing the old RedBaron 3D game from the 90's (?) if you can believe it.....so having a brandie new WWI-based flight sim is welcome news indeed!!

Tread

Been once,goin again! Great movie.
Cheers! John.

Been twice myself already......thinkin' about a third

Personally, as much as I like the aircraft, I really wish there was more Zeppelin in the film.....or at least more 'lens' time.

Tread.