Airliner portrayed in Flying Tigers
Does anyone have any idea what make of airliner was portrayed in the movie. I have seen the same type/model/mock up in several movies (ie, Five Came Back)?
shareHello.
The aircraft is a Capelis XC-12 'Safety Aircraft Transport'
Please See: http://aerofiles.com/_ca.html
Regards,
Larry
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Thanks so much Larry. That is terrific. I have seen both movies it was in and have always wondered what it was.
mar
I just read that they were grounded mostly because the skin was fastened to the frame with screws instead of rivets and kept coming loose.
shareNot "they" but "it" -- there was only one. It was built as part of an investment scam in which a man named Socrates Capelis defrauded Greek restaurant owners in Los Angeles, telling them his revolutionary airplane would put them at the pinnacle of the aviation industry; he collected loads of money and then hired students at USC to design and build the prototype on the cheap. If you've seen "The Producers", you're way ahead of me by this point...;-)
The airplane quickly revealed itself to be a PoS, but by that time Mr. Capelis was on his way to South America...presumably aboard a real airplane. A special-effects company bought the XC-12 at the bankruptcy auction, built a scale model of it, and rented the pair out to movie studios. The full-size article never flew after the initial test flights.
It was a good investment. Various movies found a fair amount of use for the actual airplane and the scale model.
Five Came Back (RKO) 1939 (airplane and model)
Flying Blind (Paramount) 1941 (model)
King of the Zombies (Monogram) 1941
Flying Tigers (Republic) 1942 (airplane and model)
Adventures of the Flying Cadets (Universal) 1943 (model)
Immortal Sergeant (20th Century Fox) 1942/1943 (airplane and model)
Invisible Agent (Universal) 1942
Night Plane from Chungking (Paramount) 1943
Wings over the Pacific (Monogram) 1943 (model)
Action in Arabia (RKO) 1944
Dick Tracy's Dilemma (RKO) 1947
Daredevils of the Clouds (Republic) 1948 (model)
Tarzan's Magic Fountain (RKO) 1949 (model)
On the Isle of Samoa (Columbia) 1950 (model)
China Gate (Globe Enterprises) 1957 (model)
Maybe the model spaceship from Forbidden Planet comes close to this number of productions but I can't think of another one with this many credits.