The Flying Missile | |
---|---|
Directed by | Henry Levin |
Screenplay by | James Gunn Richard English |
Story by | Harvey S. Haislip N. Richard Nash |
Produced by | Jerry Bresler |
Starring | Glenn Ford Viveca Lindfors Kenneth Tobey |
Cinematography | William E. Snyder |
Edited by | Viola Lawrence |
Music by | George Duning |
Production company | Columbia Pictures |
Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 91 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
The Flying Missile is a 1950 black-and-white Cold War era Columbia Pictures film starring Glenn Ford and Viveca Lindfors. Made with the cooperation of the US Navy, [1] it tells a fictionalized story of the then recently revealed story of the US Navy's first mounting and firing submarine-launched cruise missiles such as the Republic-Ford JB-2 Loon off the deck of submarines. [2]
Decorated US Navy submarine commander Commander William Talbot's (Glenn Ford) boat USS Bluefin (actually USS Cusk [3] ) is on manoeuvres with the goal of simulating sinking the aircraft carrier USS Midway. Midway is carrying a US Senator to view the test firing of a V-2 rocket from its flight deck. Sighting the carrier, Bluefin attempts a simulated torpedo attack but is detected and "sunk" by a simulated depth charge attack from a destroyer.
After viewing the successful launching of the V-2 from the surface, Talbot attempts to convince his commanding officer that if his submarine had a guided missile his attack on the carrier would have been successful. His commander relays the information that the US Navy has been thinking of the same idea and sends the Bluefin and its crew to the Pacific Missile Test Center at Naval Air Station Point Mugu for a short period of training and familiarization. On the way to the base, Bluefin ruins a fishing net of Lars Hansen's (John Qualen) fleet, which fishes in the area when the US Navy is not testing their missiles.
The crew of Bluefin are impatient with the training course they must take and attempt to speed things up and gather their own equipment through "midnight supply" (theft), but run afoul of the tight security on the base. Talbot meets and unsuccessfully attempts to seduce the base commander's secretary Karin Hansen, a Danish emigre who is the niece of the still furious Captain Lars. Talbot does obtain from Karin the location of needed missile parts at an army base and obtains them for his trial launch.
The unorthodox procedures used so well in wartime cause tragedy to the couple; Karin loses her job for revealing information and Talbot's haste in launching a missile from his boat's deck results in his serious injury and the death of his friend Quartermaster "Fuss" Payne (Joe Sawyer). Talbot's depression leaves him not desiring to walk without braces and in danger of being medically discharged from the US Navy.
Karin snaps Talbot out of his whining self-pity to take command of Bluefin during a military exercise deploying a submarine flotilla to attack a surface fleet. Talbot conceives the idea for the missile-carrying submarines to launch their missiles, but then have them successfully guided to the surface fleet by the nearer submarines originally earmarked for a torpedo attack.
The subject matter in The Flying Missile was considered restricted and no other contemporary film describing US Navy cruise missile development in the immediate postwar era had been produced. As indicated in the film's opening credits, on location photography on US naval bases, aircraft carriers, surface fleet ships and submarines took place with the "full cooperation" of the US Armed Forces. Both US Naval and US Army installations were made available.
Rear Admiral Thomas M. Dykers was the technical director on The Flying Missile. After a long and distinguished career in the US Navy as a submarine commander, Rear Admiral Dykers retired from the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations and moved to California in 1949. He worked as a technical advisor for the film industry, on films such as The Flying Missile (1950), Submarine Command (1951), and Torpedo Alley (1952). [4] He later produced and narrated the 1957–58 TV series The Silent Service. [4]
A cruiser is a type of warship. Modern cruisers are generally the largest ships in a fleet after aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships, and can usually perform several roles.
A naval ship is a military ship used by a navy. Naval ships are differentiated from civilian ships by construction and purpose. Generally, naval ships are damage resilient and armed with weapon systems, though armament on troop transports is light or non-existent.
The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place 4–7 June 1942, six months after the Empire of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. The U.S. Navy under Admirals Chester W. Nimitz, Frank J. Fletcher, and Raymond A. Spruance defeated an attacking fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy under Admirals Isoroku Yamamoto, Chūichi Nagumo, and Nobutake Kondō north of Midway Atoll, inflicting devastating damage on the Japanese fleet. Military historian John Keegan called it "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare", while naval historian Craig Symonds called it "one of the most consequential naval engagements in world history, ranking alongside Salamis, Trafalgar, and Tsushima Strait, as both tactically decisive and strategically influential."
A torpedo bomber is a military aircraft designed primarily to attack ships with aerial torpedoes. Torpedo bombers came into existence just before the First World War almost as soon as aircraft were built that were capable of carrying the weight of a torpedo, and remained an important aircraft type until they were rendered obsolete by anti-ship missiles. They were an important element in many famous Second World War battles, notably the British attack at Taranto, the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck, the sinking of the British battleship HMS Prince Of Wales and the British battlecruiser HMS Repulse and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
The Nimitz class is a class of ten nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in service with the United States Navy. The lead ship of the class is named after World War II United States Pacific Fleet commander Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, who was the last living U.S. Navy officer to hold the rank. With an overall length of 1,092 ft (333 m) and a full-load displacement of over 100,000 long tons (100,000 t), the Nimitz-class ships were the largest warships built and in service until USS Gerald R. Ford entered the fleet in 2017.
The Battle of the Philippine Sea was a major naval battle of World War II on 19–20 June 1944 that eliminated the Imperial Japanese Navy's ability to conduct large-scale carrier actions. It took place during the United States' amphibious invasion of the Mariana Islands during the Pacific War. The battle was the last of five major "carrier-versus-carrier" engagements between American and Japanese naval forces, and pitted elements of the United States Navy's Fifth Fleet against ships and aircraft of the Imperial Japanese Navy's Mobile Fleet and nearby island garrisons. This was the largest carrier-to-carrier battle in history, involving 24 aircraft carriers, deploying roughly 1,350 carrier-based aircraft.
HMS Conqueror was a British Churchill-class nuclear-powered fleet submarine which served in the Royal Navy from 1971 to 1990. She was the third submarine of her class, following the earlier Churchill and Courageous, that were all designed to face the Soviet threat at sea. She was built by Cammell Laird at Birkenhead.
Marc Andrew "Pete" Mitscher was a pioneer in naval aviation who became an admiral in the United States Navy, and served as commander of the Fast Carrier Task Force in the Pacific during World War II.
Naval aviation is the application of military air power by navies, whether from warships that embark aircraft, or land bases.
USS Key West (SSN-722), a Los Angeles-class submarine, is the third ship of the United States Navy to be named after Key West, Florida.
The names of commissioned ships of the United States Navy all start with USS, for United States Ship. Non-commissioned, primarily civilian-crewed vessels of the U.S. Navy under the Military Sealift Command have names that begin with USNS, standing for United States Naval Ship. A letter-based hull classification symbol is used to designate a vessel's type. The names of ships are selected by the Secretary of the Navy. The names are those of states, cities, towns, important persons, important locations, famous battles, fish, and ideals. Usually, different types of ships have names originated from different types of sources.
The Islamic Republic of Iran Navy or Iranian Navy, officially abbreviated NEDAJA, is the naval warfare service branch of Iran's regular military, the Islamic Republic of Iran Army (Artesh). It is one of Iran's two maritime military branches, alongside the Navy of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Naval tactics and doctrine is the collective name for methods of engaging and defeating an enemy ship or fleet in battle at sea during naval warfare, the naval equivalent of military tactics on land.
A carrier air wing is an operational naval aviation organization composed of several aircraft squadrons and detachments of various types of fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft. Organized, equipped and trained to conduct modern US Navy carrier air operations while embarked aboard aircraft carriers, the various squadrons in an air wing have different but complementary missions, and provide most of the striking power and electronic warfare capabilities of a carrier battle group (CVBG). While the CVBG term is still used by other nations, the CVBG in US parlance is now known as a carrier strike group (CSG).
The Royal Navy Submarine Service is one of the five fighting arms of the Royal Navy. It is sometimes known as the Silent Service, as submarines are generally required to operate undetected.
An aerial torpedo is a torpedo launched from a torpedo bomber aircraft into the water, after which the weapon propels itself to the target.
Torpedo Run is a 1958 American war film directed by Joseph Pevney and starring Glenn Ford as a World War II submarine commander in the Pacific who is obsessed with sinking a particular Japanese aircraft carrier. The film's working title was Hell Below. It was filmed in CinemaScope and Metrocolor.
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage of its active battle fleet alone exceeding the next 13 navies combined, including 11 allies or partner nations of the U.S. as of 2009. It has the highest combined battle fleet tonnage and the world's largest aircraft carrier fleet, with 11 in service, 1 undergoing trials, two new carriers under construction, and six other carriers planned as of 2024. With 336,978 personnel on active duty and 101,583 in the Ready Reserve, the U.S. Navy is the third largest of the United States military service branches in terms of personnel. It has 299 deployable combat vessels and about 4,012 operational aircraft as of July 18, 2023.
Operation Teardrop was a United States Navy operation during World War II, conducted between April and May 1945, to sink German U-boats approaching the Eastern Seaboard that were believed to be armed with V-1 flying bombs. Germany had threatened to attack New York with V-1 flying bombs and rocket U-boats. After the war, it was determined the submarines had not been carrying either.
Exercise Verity was the only major training exercise of the Western Union (WU). Undertaken in July 1949, it involved 60 warships from the British, French, Belgian and Dutch navies. A contemporary newsreel described this exercise as involving "the greatest assembly of warships since the Battle of Jutland."