I caught a few minutes of the end of the movie Red Tails earlier. I’ve never seen the whole movie. I started it, realized it was terrible, and shut it off. But here I was watching an action scene late in the film with historical inaccuracies my 9 year-old nephew could probably point out. (Seriously, he knows a lot about fighter planes)
I want to start by saying the story of the Tuskegee Airmen is so remarkable. It deserves far better than this shameful embarrassment of a film.
So what did I observe?
Video Game Fuel Logic
There’s an important mission to bomb a tank factory in Berlin. The Red Tails are are excluded from the exciting part, they’re told to take the less exciting escort up to the edge of Nazi airspace and then another squadron will relieve them. The squadron meant to relieve them doesn’t show up, so they decided to just keep going. They’ll be fine. They have enough fuel to make it to Berlin and back… and dogfight, if necessary. 🤨 LOLWUT?
Fuel is a valuable resource you don’t want to waste. You wouldn’t overload a plane with enough fuel to go 1600 mi / 2600 km if it was only meant to go half that distance. Not to mention the fuel necessary to accomplish this feat would require external drop tanks, which the planes do not display (unless I blinked and missed them).
This was a real mission that the 332nd Fighter Group undertook on March 24th, 1945. They were tasked with escorting the bombers all the way to Berlin and back, not just halfway. I understand the movie wanting to add another scene where racism plays into decision making, by having the black pilots be relegated to less important duty and giving the glory to the white pilots, but there are better ways to accomplish this than with fudging historical facts.
How about the commander gets wind that there’s an important mission being planned for Berlin and he argues to have his fighter group take it. And the general is like “We can’t have negro pilots for this mission, it’s going to be really difficult, it wouldn’t look good if they failed.” and then the commander gives a rousing speech that shames the white generals into agreeing the Tuskegee Airmen are ready for the challenge and willing to sacrifice just as much as the white pilots, more even.
Too Close for Comfort
The escorts fly in tight formation with the bombers. WAT? 😲
Fighter escorts flew on the flanks of the formation, not right inside of it. Not only does this make it dangerous to maneuver out to intercept attacking aircraft it also means it will take longer to get to them. The concept isn’t to attack once they start shooting down bombers it’s to hit them before they can get to the bombers!
Visionary Filmmaker George Lucas: “But we need to show them with bombers or else how will the audience know they are escorting them?”
With two simple shots. First show a fighter pilot look to his left at a bunch of big specs in the distance. “Everything is looking clear so far.” he says over the radio to his wingman. Next show a bomber pilot looking to his right at a bunch of small specs. “It’s been too quiet. I have a feeling things are going to heat up soon. Good thing those fighters are still with us.”
Head to Head Stupidity
A group of ME-262s (jet fighters) shows up. They’re attacking the bombers and fighters head on. 😶
The ME-262 was so fast that its closing rate head to head, even against a slow moving bomber, meant it had almost no time to get off an accurate shot. Against a fighter this problem is magnified. I’ll do some math for you.
The top speed of a ME-262 was 540 mph / 870 km/h.
The top speed of a P-51 was 430 mph / 690 km/h.
This means head to head they are approaching at approximately 970 mph / 1560 km/h. To put this into perspective they are closing at 1400 ft / 433 m per second. To close a distance of 1 mi / 1600 m would take less than four seconds. Count that out in your head.
A spec in the distance
One one thousand
Two one thousand
Three one thousand
Four one–it’s passed you
The guns on a ME-262 were only accurate to about 1000 ft / 300 m. This means head on with a P-51 the ME-262 pilot had less than a second to line up an accurate shot. Because of this ME-262 pilots almost always attacked from the flank.
During the actual battle the 332nd Fighter Group shot down three ME-262s. An incredible feat. They did this not with brazen head to head tactics, but by outmaneuvering them. The ME-262 had a slow turn speed, which the P-51 pilots exploited. How about showing us that? Our heroes are blown away by how fast they are going head to head. They need to develop a new tactic.
“I can’t even line up a shot.”
“He’s turning for another pass.”
“Look at how slow that pig turns.”
“Exposing his belly, just like a hog. Smokey, follow my lead, I got an idea!”
The only thing they showed was that they knew they needed speed and so they climbed in order to dive at the jets.
German Pea Shooters
One of our heroes gets shot during his his head-on run with an ME-262. He gets a few small holes in him and heroically flies on. I actually have no idea if he survives, I turned it off after that.
The ME-262 was armed with four 30 mm cannons (notice the use of the word “cannon” and not gun). 30 mm is 1.3 inches. That’s the diameter of the bullet. Ever seen a Kennedy half dollar coin? Those are 30 mm in diameter. So press one of those against your skin and that’s your starting point for how big the hole would be if you were shot by one of those rounds.
I say starting point because the energy of the bullet would cause it to tear an even larger hole. And that’s leaving out the fact that the Mk 108 cannon was designed to take down bombers, so it fired explosive rounds. If it did manage to pierce the cockpit and hit his flesh it would have absolutely shredded him. Think less “pea shooter” and more “tomato soup”.
War is a disgusting business. Show how disgusting it is. Make us fear and resent it so that we’ll never want to take part in it, unless absolutely necessary.
I genuinely don’t understand why Hollywood feels that being true to history is an affront to creating dramatic tension. Band of Brothers is a great example of being true to history and still creating something dramatic. Just cut out the boring bits… you know the months and months of men sitting around doing nothing before their next big engagement. Compress a few events, maybe combine one or two historical figures for simplicity, and bam… something that still shows us the truth of what happened in an engaging way.
Making a schlock action film out of a real event where real people suffered and died is despicable. Or if you’re going to do something schlocky like that; take it completely off the rails of reality like Inglorious Basterds or Wolfenstein.
Armchair Screenwriter 