Aircraft in fiction

[66] Avro Ansons featured in the 1940 novel Landfall by Nevil Shute, a story about a young British pilot named Chambers flying with RAF Coastal Command in the early months of the Second World War.

[102] B-17s are the main aircraft featured in two novels depicting fictional characters in the US daylight bombing offensive over Germany and Occupied Europe, American writer Sam Helpert's A Real Good War (1997)[103] and UK author Robert Radcliffe's Under an English Heaven (2004).

[123] B-25s appear in the 1976 novel Whip by Martin Caidin, which portrays a B-25 unit based in Australia and commanded by Captain 'Whip' Russell and they are employed in low-level bombing missions against Japanese convoys carrying reinforcements to Guadalcanal and Rabaul in 1942.

[138] Ejection seat testing of B-47s performed at Eglin AFB, Florida, in 1953 and 1954 as part of aeromedical research was recreated in the 1955 20th Century Fox film On the Threshold of Space starring Guy Madison,[139][140] and in a 1957 Pine-Thomas Productions drama Bailout at 43,000.

In the early part of the film, Pilot Officer Peter Penrose (John Mills), a '15-hour sprog' (rookie) arrives at Halfpenny Field, a Royal Air-Force aerodrome, in the summer of 1940 and joins B-Flight of No 72 Squadron, equipped with Blenheims and commanded by Flight-Lieutenant David Archdale (Michael Redgrave).

by John W. Campbell, Jr.[227] In the 1955 British film The Night My Number Came Up directed by Leslie Norman and starring Michael Redgrave and Denholm Elliott, a man tells guests at a dinner party of a dream he had of a Tokyo-bound Dakota that crashes in the Japanese mountains.

[245] A restored Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation Wirraway, an Australian production variant of the North American NA-16 Harvard, appeared in the beach landing scenes in the 1998 war film The Thin Red Line directed by Terrence Malick and based on the 1962 James Jones novel of the same name.

[276] The Dassault Mirage 2000 is prominently featured in the 2005 French movie Sky Fighters (Les Chevaliers du ciel) about two air force pilots preventing a terrorist attack on the Bastille Day celebrations in Paris.

[277] The 1982 film Mother Lode made use of a de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver on floats as the neglected mount of character Jean Dupré (Nick Mancuso), who embarks on a search for a missing friend in northern British Columbia.

The film portrayed an RFC pilot named Gale Price (Cooper) who, heartbroken over what he believes to be his unrequited love for a French woman, volunteers for a special unit tasked with flying dangerous missions during the Great War.

[359] The Transformers toy line and media have featured numerous characters who turn into F-15 Eagles, the most notable being the villain Starscream in 1984[360] and a group of similar Decepticons, the Seekers: Acid Storm, Thundercracker, Skywarp and Sunstorm.

[415] Footage of an F-104 featured in the opening scenes of the science-fiction motion picture The Bamboo Saucer (1968), playing the role of an experimental jet called the "X-109" whose pilot Fred Norwood (John Ericson) encounters a UFO while carrying out a test flight.

[424] When the Fairchild Hiller FH-227D operating as Uruguayan Air Force (Fuerza Aérea Uruguaya) Flight 571 T-571 crashed in the Argentine Andes on 13 October 1972, it began a tale of amazing human survival for the 16 of the 45 on board who were rescued over two months later, after two passengers walked to civilization.

When the story was filmed in 1992 as Alive, directed by Frank Marshall, a similar FH-227 marked as the doomed aircraft was used for some shots, while Industrial Light & Magic depicted the crash using an eight-foot breakaway model, designed to shear at mid-fuselage.

[431] Fw 190s appear in the French graphic novel The Grand Duke (2012) written by Yann, illustrated by Romain Hugault and depicting aerial combat between the Soviet air force and the German Luftwaffe over the Eastern Front in the latter stages of the Second World War.

[533] A replica Junkers W 33 appears in the 1985 Australian TV mini-series Flight into Hell, a dramatisation of the 1932 Kimberley rescue of German aviators Hans Bertram and Adolph Klausmann who, during an attempt to circumnavigate the world, crash-landed in a remote region of North-West Australia.

[556] Several Lockheed L-1011 TriStars were depicted in the 1990 action film Die Hard 2, with two large models constructed by Industrial Light and Magic "flown" on wires for the cameras through "storm clouds" made of non-toxic vaporized mineral oil.

[281] In Michael Crichton's Airframe, one of the characters uses the crash of American Airlines Flight 191 which involved a DC-10 to describe how a highly publicized accident can destroy a good airplane's reputation because "a media industry that has grown hostile and shallow with the ascendancy of television always jumps to the wrong conclusion.

[622] The rocket craft is also the subject of the 1961 Essex Productions film X-15, a fictionalized account of the program, directed by Richard Donner in his first outing, and narrated by USAF Brigadier General (Reserve) James Stewart in an uncredited role.

[645][646] The Steven Spielberg film Empire of the Sun (1987), based on the J. G. Ballard novel of the same name, featured models and restored Mustangs in an attack on a Japanese airstrip next to the internment camp where the story's protagonist is imprisoned.

[654] A PBY Catalina features in the 1947 film High Barbaree (also released under the title Enchanted Island) which was directed by Jack Conway, starred Van Johnson and was based on the 1945 novel of the same name by Charles Nordhoff & James Norman Hall.

[691] CIA officer Jack Ryan (played by Alec Baldwin) is flown from an aircraft carrier to the submarine USS Dallas in a Sikorsky SH-3H Sea King in the 1990 film Hunt for Red October, based on the Tom Clancy's novel of the same title.

[157] The 1954 film The Bridges at Toko-Ri, based on the 1953 James A. Michener novella of the same title, opens and closes with scenes of a US Navy Sikorsky HO3S-1 of utility helicopter squadron HU-1 operating from an Essex-class aircraft carrier in pilot rescue and recovery during the Korean War.

[163] A Westland Widgeon, a UK-built version of the Sikorsky S-51, appears in the 1971 British film When Eight Bells Toll, starring Anthony Hopkins, directed by Étienne Périer and based on the Alistair MacLean novel of the same name.

[698] The HH-53C variant was used in the combined combat search and rescue and VIP delivery sequences in the 1982 Malpaso Productions spy and action film Firefox,[699] produced, directed by, and starring Clint Eastwood, based on the 1977 novel of the same name by Craig Thomas.

Portfolio images of various CGI artists on the team show it as being gray, like a CH-53 Sea Stallion, in early stages of production, but in the final cut, it's green, lacks any USMC markings and even comes from a USAF airbase, all meaning it must be a Super Jolly.

[716] A 1/6 scale radio-controlled model of a Sopwith 1½ Strutter was constructed by Proctor Enterprises to appear in the ABC television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles episode "Attack of the Hawkmen" (1995) produced by George Lucas.

To film the scene, stunt pilot Dick Kerwood was required to fly over the submarine (loaned by the US Navy) in San Diego Bay and, at about 3,000 feet, parachute out of his plane after setting the timer to explosives which would detonate ten seconds later.

[744][745] A replica Vickers FB5 was constructed to appear in the 1986 film Sky Bandits (also released under the title Gunbus) which was about a pair of cowboys who flee the US to escape prison for a bank robbery and end up serving in the RFC during the Great War.

[764] On 25 March 1956, the first XB-51 prototype, 46-0685, crashed in sand dunes near Biggs Air Force Base, El Paso, Texas, killing both crew, while staging to Eglin AFB, Florida, for filming of scenes for the motion picture.