Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944) on Netflix
Passed19442h 18mDramaHistoryWar
Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle calls for volunteers for a secret mission. Pilot Ted Lawson signs on with his B-25 crew, and his pregnant wife Ellen joins him at the Florida base.
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Trailer
Plot summary
Pilot Ted Lawson and his B-25 crew answer a call for volunteers from Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle and train at Eglin Field in Florida for a mission whose target is kept from them. With Lawson are co-pilot Dean Davenport, navigator Charles McClure, bombardier Bob Clever and gunner David Thatcher. His wife Ellen, expecting a baby, supports his decision to go. A naval officer from nearby Pensacola drills the crews on take-offs from a runway only 500 feet long, and Lawson's plane takes the name Ruptured Duck. Doolittle offers every man the chance to drop out, and all of them stay. The crews then fly to Naval Air Station Alameda, California, where their bombers are loaded aboard a Navy carrier.
Cast
- Herbert Gunnas Bob Clever
- John R. Reillyas 'Shorty' Manch
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Dean Davenport was a technical adviser and stunt flyer for Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. He flew a B-25 bomber off a pier in Santa Monica, California, for a scene showing the take-offs from the Hornet.
- Plans to build an aircraft carrier on a Malibu beach for the film were discarded because of interference from seagulls. Instead, art director Paul Groesse designed an interior flat-top set that could carry three real B-25 bombers.
- No aircraft carrier was available for the film, since the USS Hornet had been sunk in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands on October 27, 1942, only six months after launching the raid. Its scenes were recreated with a mix of studio sets and original newsreel footage.
- MGM told the War Department it wanted to dispel rumors that the Army and Navy were not cooperating in the war, and to build support for China by showing the aid given to the downed Americans. The studio did not mention that the Chinese helping the flyers were Communist guerillas.
- Mervyn LeRoy directed the film's bombers in flight from a radio-equipped jeep. That let him talk with both the ground camera and the camera plane.
- Jefferson Airplane's second live album, Thirty Seconds Over Winterland (1973), and experimental rock band Pere Ubu's 1975 debut single, "30 Seconds Over Tokyo", were named after the film.
- Phyllis Thaxter, Tim Murdock, Steve Brodie, and Robert Mitchum all made their screen debuts in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.
