The pilots left the carrier in F4U Corsairs, and the first mission showed ordinance dropped by SB2C Helldivers and the landings were done showing F4F Wildcats with the 'after-landing' unmistakable wing-folding characteristic feature of the Wildcat.
Some plane-to-plane shots showed the silhouette of the F4F very clearly.
When Ensign Barney Smith comes aboard, he is flying an AD-1 Skyraider.
This aircraft only first saw military action in Korea and was not a part of the military aircraft of WWII.
Sterling Hayden is the stiff-necked Naval Air commander ("Collier") who arrives on his carrier to command an already established - but very green - air squadron. The story of how he licks them into shape is pretty ordinary - they have a lieutenant (Richard Carlson) who acts a bit like their dad, trying to shield them from the harshness of their new skipper - but as they all start to work together...
My pet peeve for most World War 2 movies (this one included) is the switching from one aircraft type to another in the same sequence, namely, a Corsair starts take-off and a Grumman Hellcat or Douglas Dauntless leaves the flight deck, or starting a dive-bomb attack with a Corsair and then showing a Hellcat completing the pass. There are many instances of this inconsistency in the film, but if you get past that it's OK.
Flat Top is a run of the mill war film with an old plot device about a conflict between the group captain and the executive officer on how to command. But considering this came from Monogram Pictures which was transitioning to Allied Artists, for what product normally came from that studio this could have been Gone With The Wind.
My attraction to this B feature from 1952 is the above summary. Tragic perhaps to most, but to me, not even remotely interested in the Navy or war films or Sterling Hayden and Richard Carlson or anything to do with guns (it might as well have been a western too, for that matter, but it isn't) ...
I am into WW2 aircraft carriers and the Pacific War and I find this film to be a good one for its time. The editing is great and there is only a couple of war film segments that appear twice.
Ugly film--lots of degraded/fuzzy actual color stock footage. dropping torpedo?!
Richard Carlson is the pilot who lands a green squadron aboard the USS Princeton, but before they can take a crack at those Japs they all must be whipped into shape by their tough commander, Sterling Hayden. The combat missions increase in difficulty and some losses are incurred but eventually they straighten up and fly right, thanks to Hayden's unyielding demands.
A story of a green squadron on a US carrier in the Pacific in 1944. When they land on the USS Princetown, they find their new CO is a cold, tough as oak, stickler for the book.
The opening credits and martial music seem rather grand to be bearing the infamous name of poverty row purveyors Monogram Pictures - now moving (for them) upmarket and soon to rebrand themselves Allied Artists - by whose standards this production by Walter Mirisch (who later gave us 'The Great Escape') obviously represented a prestige project. Those with a knowledge of US military aircraft will as usual have a great time pointing out all the mismatched aircraft footage (just as trainspotters never tire of pointing out that the rolling stock is all wrong in any film with a railway setting); but the 16mm Kodachrome film shot by enterprising wartime cameramen was already proving a gift that keeps on giving, of which this early production was an early beneficiary, aided by Cinecolor photography by Harry Neumann and art direction and editing by David Milton and William Austin that reasonably unobtrusively blends the original footage with studio work and scenes actually shot on the USS Princeton.
