Red Skies of Montana is a 1952 American adventure drama film directed by Joseph M. Newman and starring Richard Widmark, Constance Smith and Jeffrey Hunter.

Widmark stars as a smokejumper who attempts to save his crew while being overrun by a forest fire, not only to preserve their lives, but to redeem himself after being the only survivor of a previous disaster.

Cliff Mason, a veteran foreman of the Forest Service's smokejumper unit, is called out with a crew on a fire, despite the fact that they have not rested in three days.

"Pop" Miller and four other men, Cliff leaves the smokejumper base at Missoula, Montana to parachute into a nearly inaccessible area of Bugle Peak.

The next day, after the fire crowns, Dick flies by helicopter into the area and is stunned to find only Cliff, in shock and wandering through the devastated region.

A board of review conducts a hearing into the matter, and Cliff grows increasingly defensive after several grueling days of repetitious questioning.

Cliff's paranoia grows that he might be thought a coward who deserted his men despite the assurances of his devoted wife Peg and Dick, who lets him return to work only as supervisor of training.

Ed continues to grill Cliff, asking him how he might have come to be in the protected rock slide area that was the only possible place of survival when the bodies of his crew were found on an exposed ridge across the valley.

After losing his head and trying to kill Cliff with the axe end of his Pulaski, Ed breaks his leg when he tumbles down a slope as they fight.

Ed is surprised to discover that Cliff is responsible for his rescue, and when he is brought back to the anchor point, the crew panics and starts to flee.

When Dick realizes the entire crew has survived, he reinforces Cliff's men from the air as an even larger ground force with bulldozers swings into action.

[13] Filming resumed June 22 with Widmark and Richard Boone starring and Jeffrey Hunter in the part originally written for Victor Mature.

[16] The aircraft was used by the USFS from June 5, 1951, to August 4, 1959, when it crashed and burned while landing at the Moose Creek spike camp airstrip in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness in Idaho, 50 miles west of Missoula, killing two smokejumpers and a Nez Perce National Forest supervisor.