Movie substitutes

[Caveman]

I'm sure I've seen this discussed before on here but now can't find it. - Movie aircraft substitutions, I.e. dressing one aircraft up as another.

Bf 108s dressed up as 109s & bomber variant mossies dressed up as fighter-bombers in 633.

Tiger moths dressed as fokkers in Laurence of Arabia.

Texan/Harvards dressed as every ww2 Japanese aircraft.

F5 dressed as mig 28 in topgun

Rutan Ares dressed as Me 263 in aces iron eagle 3.

I think this sort of behaviour gives us a whole avenue of whif potential. Get an aircraft that looks slightly like another "from certain angles" and paint them up well enough to fool the punters.

What if the nazis were making their own version of the Battle of Britain. What would they use to substitute spitfires or hurricanes? I think they'd go to mr heinkel. I've not got a 112, but I do have a 70 that I think could be made to pass for a spit on film.

Thoughts?

[Weaver]

Battle of Britain had it's well-known Spanish Merlin-engined Bf 109s and He 111s, but they were also short of Hurricane's so Spanish 109s are actually playing them, in RAF cammo, in the back of some shots (back three here):




There was also an attempt to build a full-sized Stuka from a Percival Proctor (known as the 'Proctuka') but it's handling was so bad that they gave up and used RC models in the end.




Again, in Hot Shots, everyone knows about the Ajeets and Gnat T.1s painted up in 'THE NAVY' colours, but did you know there was also a privately owned Siai-Marchetti S.211 making up the numbers (left hand aircraft in this shot)?

[Weaver]

Here's a what-if movie idea: imagine if Bollywood made a Hotshots-style spoof movie set in the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war, and deliberately used US Navy types as a nod to Hotshots? They could use Skyhawk warbirds as Gnats and A-7 Corsairs as Pakistani Sabres...

[Snowtrooper]

This thread reminds me to rewatch my collection of air combat movies and make notes, as prior to warbird revival era and CGI most of WW1 and WW2 movies and TV shows most likely have crude substitutes... Also, understandably during the Cold War OPFOR aircraft were hard to come by, which is why a Super Puma usually gets to play Mi-24 Hind (except in Red Scorpion where a Sikorsky S-62 plays the part instead).

Texan/Harvards dressed as every ww2 Japanese aircraft.

Rutan Ares dressed as Me 263 in aces iron eagle 3.

Besides these two, Iron Eagle III also has a Mustang painted as a Bf 109 (at least it's a B/C and not D...) and as a bonus has G-2 Galebs as Peruvian Air Force fighters. Of course, since the first two parts of the franchise were filmed with the kind help of IAF, the first one has Kfirs painted as MiG-23's (or 21's), as does the second. Alas, IAF did not lend their F-15's for filming, so F-4's play the part of MiG-29's in part II (F-15 as Su-27 stand-in would have at least been believable). There was also a shoestring budget DTV sequel Iron Eagle IV: On the Attack, which recycled FX shots from the first two and spliced them with archive footage. Which lead to funny discontinuities as F-16's change into T-38's and back.

The short-lived TV series Supercarrier used various aggressor aircraft (F-16, (T)A-4, F-5) as various "MiG's" of unspecified type.

Of course, there's always the misuse of archival/newsreel footage, especially rampant in TV shows. I can understand this in the context of a small-budget show which does not revolve around aviation, but Airwolf must be the worst offender in this regard. There's usually no continuity whatsoever in the archival-as-FX shots and no regard to the plane type or even its visible appearance at all (something like "MiG's are scrambling", it's a pair of F-101's, "MiG is firing missiles" is a Su-7 firing rockets, and when it's shot down it's actually a QF-86 drone).

Bearing in mind that HBO did not always have as high production values as today, the embarrassing Steal the Sky uses MiG-15UTI's as MiG-21's and T-33's as (supposedly) Mirage III's.

Exceptionally, in Fire Birds (aka Wings of the Apache) SAAB Drakens actually portray Drakens (how South American drug cartels would have procured them is another matter entirely, but I guess one of us here would perhaps like to take a note).

[scooter]

Don't forget about Phantoms dressed up as MiGs in one of the Iron Turkeys Eagles

[Weaver]

I've long had ideas for a couple of 'Tin Turkey' spoofs on the Iron Eagle series, one about the Falklands and one about the Avro Arrow.

The Falklands one would be made during the window-of-opportunity (now passed, of course) between an RN Harrier carrier being taken out of service and being scrapped. As well as the usual miscasting and mangling of history to make the Soviets the bad guys and have the Americans save the day, their other problems would be that the UK MoD refuses to let the carrier leave UK waters, but the CAA refuses them permission to fly from it, so all the carrier deck shots have to be done with non-flying 1st gen Harriers on the deck with UK-based warbirds flying past, then all the air-to-air shots have to be done in California with a totally different set of warbirds and inappropriate scenery. The result is.... interesting (in the same way that a car crash is interesting...)

The Arrow one is filmed in Israel and uses Magisters as CF-100s and Kfirs as CF-105s. The script has the US 'borrowing' the prototype to fly a top secret anti-UFO mission, and the result is so secret that the whole program has to be 'unfortunately' shut down to preserve security....

[kitbasher]

IIRC #1 A Bridge Too Far used Harvards as FW190s, P-47s and Typhoons.

IIRC#2 in an early Rutger Hauer film 'Soldaat van Oranje' a Harvard (gear fixed down, faired and spatted) represented a Fokker D.XXI.

[reddfoxx]

Great thread idea, and comments.  I always notice these, to my wife's annoyance.  You guys have covered all the ones I can think of.  There is the Yak used in cockpit shots in "Dunkirk" to represent a Spitfire.

[MiB]

In the 20th century, during the cold war, it was very difficult to find Soviet aircraft, so there were strange hybrids in the films of the time:
C-130 Hercules dressed soviet Antonov in "007 - The Living Daylights":



Dauphin dressed like a Mil in "007 - Octopussy":





BO-105 dressed like another soviet chopper in "007 - A View To A Kill":



The famous Puma dressed like an Hind in "Red Dawn":



Sikorsky S-62 dressed like a Hind in "Red Scorpion":



Sikorsky S-58 dressed like a Mil Mi-8 Hip, in "The Fourth War" and soviet Lama in "Condorman":



And, last but not least, some F-4 Phantom dressed like soviet fighters in Iron Eagle sequel and in a Magnum P.I. episode.

[pirx]

US Navy IL-38:



http://impdb.org/index.php?title=Sluchay_v_kvadrate_36-80


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVHJKo5S-RQ

[MiB]

USCG Mil Mi-24, from movie "Zaryazhennye smertyu":

[scooter]

IIRC #1 A Bridge Too Far used Harvards as FW190s, P-47s and Typhoons.

T-6/SNJ/Harvards were used for literally *everything*, especially IJN aircraft.

[PR19_Kit]

S-62s were almost ubiquitous in almost any scenario at one stage. The movie industry must have bought a job lot from the USCG. 

Not quite a 'substitute' but my fave of such mangled aviation 'history' was in Dr Strangelove, where the last remaining B-52 is looooow down over the Russian mountains heading for its target, but its shadow on the ground below is that of a B-17! 

[Logan Hartke]

The Longest Day also had Skyraiders standing in for Typhoons and Nord 1002s standing in for Fw 190s.





PR19_Kit beat me to my favorite, too.



Some other famous ones are Blue Max and Jet Pilot. Trainers are stand-ins for everything. T-33s and L-39s in many modern movies. Texans, Stearmans, Tiger Moths, Stampes, Bf 108s, and even the Pilatus P-2 in The Last Crusade.

Cheers,

Logan

[scooter]

S-62s were almost ubiquitous in almost any scenario at one stage. The movie industry must have bought a job lot from the USCG. 

Not quite a 'substitute' but my fave of such mangled aviation 'history' was in Dr Strangelove, where the last remaining B-52 is looooow down over the Russian mountains heading for its target, but its shadow on the ground below is that of a B-17! 

At least its in the same family