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Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site bonnie.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!dpw
From: dpw@bonnie.UUCP (David Williams)
Newsgroups: net.aviation
Subject: Re: Spies on the net from Amazing Stories
Message-ID: <608@bonnie.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 6-Nov-85 19:57:38 EST
Article-I.D.: bonnie.608
Posted: Wed Nov  6 19:57:38 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 7-Nov-85 05:44:21 EST
References: <2786@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Whippany NJ
Lines: 23

> Psychics take note! No sooner do we discuss a topic on net.aviation
> (B-17 belly turrets and the fate of the gunner in wheels-up landings)
> than the EXACT SAME THEME is the topic of the special one-hour Amazing
> Stories aired 3 Nov 85.  ...

   I turned on the tube about the time this episode was getting underway,
and stuck with it to the bitter end (required some gnashing of teeth).
Sloppiness like the air combat scenes reduces me to ranting and raving -
the attacking 'aircraft' (looked a lot like Spitfires) might as
well have been flying backwards for all the fidelity the film clips
managed.  The film the special effects guys rounded up were pasted
into just about every available porthole.  The effects were fighters
in horrible flailing skids and slips (velocity vectors completely
screwed up) and head-on closing rates, at times, of a few miles an
hour.  I conclude that no one in the special effects crew has ever
ridden in an airplane or watched an episode of 12 O'Clock High.
   The next 35 or 40 minutes improved my humor, but the writers had to
resort to fantasy to finish up the story - there must be thousands of
chronicles of narrow escapes from B-17s that they could have picked
from!?!   Oh well, you get what you pay for.

David Williams (081)
AT&T Bell Labs, Whippany