hyped garbage

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Boring

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Anyone who is an aviation enthusiast will love this movie purely for the footage of the aircraft. However, those same people will hate the movie for the interminable number of factual errors. To people who are not enthusiasts they will not be noticed and make no difference to their opinion of the film. The storyline is very basic and lacks any depth. It really is just good guys vs bad with the obvious outcome. Neither do any of the characters have any depth. They are all over the top "gung ho" types, incessant jokes and smart comments. A little bit of this is OK, but an hour and a half is too much. Despite a well known cast they do nothing to improve the situation. No character shows any signs of stress or trepidation that we know veterans suffer. It seems that this would be a sign of weakness. For the time this movie was made it is understandable as the allies were still celebrating their victory. If you enjoy WW2 propaganda movies or films to do with aviation you will enjoy this movie. However, if you are looking for a good story this is not the film.

After WW2 there were thousands of tons of unused war fighting material and equipment that were dumped on the civilian market as war surplus, at bargain basement prices, just to get rid of it.I guess the Warner Brothers wartime propaganda film machine had exactly the same problem... they had tons of perfectly good, unused clichés that they didn't need anymore because the war had ended. So they wrapped them all up and dropped them like a huge blockbuster bomb into the script of FIGHTER SQUADRON, in one last explosion of silver screen bravado! Somehow I get the feeling that this barrage of badinage was something that they'd had left over from that other great collection of wartime wisecracking, GOD IS MY COPILOT. Tokyo Joe and Colonel Robert Scott hadn't used 'em all up, and this stuff had a definite shelf life... so it was a case of Use it or Lose it.The flying sequences are first rate... much of it is actual combat footage and gun camera film, liberally supplemented by footage of postwar Air National Guard pilots flying their beloved Jugs for one last orgasm of wartime glory before the cameras.As somebody else pointed out, you'll never see that many Thunderbolts in the air again. For aviation buffs like me, that's a saving virtue... the P-47 was a hell of a fighter plane design which, in my opinion, was robbed of it's share of recognition by the much more flashy (but also quite capable) P51 Mustang.There's no need to yet again go into the Whys and Wherefores of the "Messerschmidts" that came rolling off of North American's P-51D assembly lines. Those California Air National Guard flown Bad Guys can take their place in cinematic history alongside the British built Hawker Hurricane that ALSO played the part of a Messerschmidt in Jimmy Cagney's CAPTAINS OF THE CLOUDS... a film which, by the way, was ANOTHER Warner Brothers firing range for unloosing tons of large caliber clichés.The music in FIGHTER SQUADRON is also a collection of beloved wartime leftovers.The film's main musical theme was recycled from the Erroll Flynn/Fred MacMurray prewar epic DIVE BOMBER. During the sequence where the Thunderbolts supplied ground support for the Omaha Beach invasion forces, the theme music for the ground troops was lifted directly from the "Over the Top" sequence in Gary Cooper's SERGEANT YORK! The film's plot and subplots are, to say the least, weak... the script is another Clearance Sale of hackneyed plot devices that had to be used up before they turned rancid on the shelf.The result of all of this is a film that's something of a parody. I would have expected better of Raoul Walsh, but His was not to Reason Why.FIGHTER SQUADRON is a lot of fun to watch, especially if you've got a couple of cold beers handy, if you can turn off reason and reality for the duration. Suspension of Disbelief is is the order of the day.Just view this one as Hollywood's Postwar Victory Lap.

I just want to add this to all the excellent technical comment by others, because I am surprised that no one else has said this: "Fighter Squadron" is the third filming of the plot for "The Dawn Patrol", which Warner's made in 1930 and again in 1938 (both are excellent, by the way). The setting basically switches from WWI to WW2, and some changes are made to accommodate the postwar audience. I THINK this was recycled for a Korean war title as well, but can't recall the name, so don't quote me.A personal note: I, too am a former Air Force pilot from the '70s/'80s (F4E, then F-15), and this movie was one of the ones that made me want to fly when I saw it on TV as a kid, along with the great lost "I Wanted Wings".So the heck with the technical details, once I hear that Max Steiner score, I'm ready to settle down for a great popcorn movie!

I have seen this movie two times on late night TV and have enjoyed as much as 12 O'clock High. Although some critics may say it's superficial and more action oriented than 12 O'clock, I think it represents a needed aspect of the WWII air-war. Some parts are taken from actual incidents, like the rescue of a downed fellow pilot by another pilot by landing in a field and picking him up in enemy held territory. P-47 Thunderbolts with drop tanks were used to escort allied bombers until the long range P-51 became available. It is ironic that after the war the air force got rid of the P-47 in favor of the P-51 and that during the Korean war the P-51 suffered high casualties because they were used in a ground attack role in which the P-47 were much more suited. I do hope they come out with it on DVD soon.