Memphis Belle (1990) on Netflix
In May 1943, the Memphis Belle, a B-17, has one raid left before the crew's tour ends. Captain Dennis Dearborn and his men must bomb an aircraft plant at Bremen, Germany.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb6.9/1032,321 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes68%
Trailer
Plot summary
In the summer of 1943, a B-17 Flying Fortress named the Memphis Belle sits at an Army Air Corps base in England while ground crews repair her for one more raid. Her captain, Dennis Dearborn, leads four officers and six enlisted men who have survived twenty-four missions and would be the first Eighth Air Force bomber crew to finish a full tour, while fewer and fewer other planes return from their missions. Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Derringer, an Army publicist, plans to promote the ten as heroes and to sell war bonds with their record, which Colonel Craig Harriman, the squadron commander, opposes. The target is a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 factory at Bremen, Germany, next to a school, a hospital, playgrounds and civilian homes.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Memphis Belle (1990)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- A French B-17G (F-BEEA), used as a filming platform, hit a tree and a pile of gravel after losing engine power during takeoff from Binbrook and was destroyed by the subsequent fire; all 10 of the crew escaped with only minor injuries, the most serious a broken leg.
- Five real B-17 warbirds were used in the filming of Memphis Belle, out of eight B-17s that were airworthy during the late 1980s; the original Memphis Belle was a B-17F model, so any B-17Gs used in the film were heavily modified to look like an earlier F model, having chin turrets removed.
- After the film's release Robert Hanson, the real Memphis Belle's radio operator, spoke to his grandson's high school class; asked whether what happened in the film was true, he replied "No, it didn't all happen to the Memphis Belle, but everything in the movie happened to some B-17".
- As there were no surviving flyable Messerschmitt Bf 109s, the Luftwaffe fighter aircraft were represented by Ha-1112s, a Spanish version of the Bf 109 that had also stood in for Bf 109s in the 1969 film Battle of Britain.
- The film is a fictional version of the 1944 documentary Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress by director William Wyler, and the 1990 version was co-produced by David Puttnam and Wyler's daughter Catherine and dedicated to her father.
