The airplanes are open cockpit biplanes. Open cockpit biplanes believably shot King Kong off the Empire State Building a decade earlier, but they look really out of place in the Luftwaffe. Anybody know if these are historically accurate or just Hollywood using what was available. - nd12strngs
It's been a few years since I last watched
Action in the North Atlantic, but the use of German biplanes never seemed inaccurate to me because they were used, especially in maritime operations. The Wikipedia page for the movie (link below) states that they are Heinkel He 59s; again, I'd have to see the scenes again to make a positive ID. (Not that I'm an aviation expert, but I am interested in the subject.)
By the end of the war, biplanes used by all combatants had been retired from active service except as trainers and in non-combat roles, although both the Germans and especially the Japanese would have used them, if still available, as they would have been desperate for any equipment at that point.
However, at the start of the war, biplanes were still in service in a number of capacities, usually as reconnaissance craft, although the British front-line naval torpedo bomber was the Fairey Swordfish, a biplane that was slow as molasses but that played a significant role in a number of actions, most notably in the 1941 sinking of the German battleship
Bismarck. (Their use in the 1960 film
Sink the Bismarck! is historically accurate.) Amazingly, the Swordfish's replacement was to be
another biplane, the Fairey Albacore, but it was eventually replaced by the Fairey Barracuda, a monoplane.
Now, the Heinkel He 59 was in service during the time frame of the film, but whether they were ever used against convoys such as the ones shown in the film is another story. The Wiki page for the film states that they used "authentic models" for the attack scenes, but that doesn't mean they were used in actual attacks.
Bottom line for me, though, is that it's authentic enough--biplanes were used during the war even if we think of them as outdated for the time.
Action in the North Atlantic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_in_the_North_AtlanticHeinkel He 59:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinkel_He_59------------------
If I were a comedian, I'd incorporate myself so I could become a laughingstock.
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nd12strngs
10 years ago
Thank you for your insight. I knew about the British biplanes going after the Bismarck, but I assumed that was a case of the British being British. By the time of the events portrayed in the movie I thought the Germans would have relegated the biplane to the very early stages of training their pilots.
The German biplanes looked as if they were refugees from an earlier war flying into the wrong movie by mistake.
It's a fun historical detail to chat about.
Again, thanks.
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