sunday fantasy #168: more Avatar, from the new trailer
November 01, 2009, 9:21pm
x planes
experimental aircraft. exotic aeromachines. oddities. sleek silver cigars. pedal-o-trons. soviet hive-mind bombers. aerial joy. the olden days. action shots. propaganda posters. etc
[xplanes] [at] [hotmail] [dot] [co] [dot] [uk]
Designed by Redfield. Icons by Cameron Hunt.
aviation giant Roscoe Turner poses in front of the Hell’s Angels Gotha
stunt pilot Ira Reed is behind him. Reed almost died in a mid-air collision during the filming of the movie..
October 05, 2009, 7:21pm
Film production crew and cast pose in front of the Sikorsky S-29, modified to resemble a German Gotha bomber, which was used in the 1930 Howard Hughes movie Hell’s Angels
When looking back at the life of Hughes, it is easy to become lost in a mire of recollections, rumours, accusations, Leo DeCaprio - and of course that Simpsons episode..
For the World War One based Hell’s Angels, Hughes - aged just 23 - basically assembled the world’s largest private air force - approximately ninety aircraft - at a cost of around $600,000
For the scene in which the Gotha bomber (above) was shot down, Hughes insisted that the aircraft be put into a spin - with the aircrew bailing out if necessary. Daredevil pilot Al Wilson accepted, for the sum of $10,000. A mechanic named Phil Jones volunteered to be his assistant, releasing black smoke to simulate the aircraft being hit by gunfire. Jones lost his life when the aircraft fell to earth during the filming of the scene.
Two other stunt pilots died whilst involved with the movie, including Al Johnson of the legendary 13 Black Cats. Hughes himself was injured crashing a plane (allegedly whilst trying to micro-manage his stunt pilots in the air)
Annoyingly, the advent of the talking picture during production meant that Hughes had to reshoot large sections of the film with dialogue - and cast the largely unknown Jean Harlow to replace the existing female lead.
The film ended up costing Hughes a record $4 million to make. Despite a spectacular premiere and warm reviews, it is believed that the movie takings did not recoup the costs for at least a couple of decades..
October 05, 2009, 5:35pm
May 8, 1925. Washington, D.C. ” ‘Yorktown.’ Christening of Sikorsky plane.”
“This aircraft is the S-29A (The A stands for first Sikorsky model built in America). It was eventually sold to famed stunt pilot Roscoe Turner, who in turn sold it to Howard Hughes. Hughes had it disguised as a WWI German Gotha bomber, and it was crashed (spun in) during the filming of Hells Angels.”
October 05, 2009, 8:51am
“American actor Ormer Locklear (1891-1920), wearing a tuxedo, walks on the wings of an airplane crashed in a farmer’s field in a still from director James P. Hogan’s silent film, ‘The Skywayman’. Locklear died while performing an aerial maneuver during nighttime shooting for the movie.”
September 28, 2009, 11:23pm
sunday fantasy #128
Russian tilt-rotor mock-up/prop for an unknown American TV/Movie project circa 2008. Can anyone shed any more light on this?
(via the secretprojects forum, who didn’t get to the bottom of this - a rare occurence)
August 23, 2009, 11:03pm
