Cheap Pistol Packin Mama:Mission of a B-17 (Video) (Frank Woodruff) Price

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DELBERT

Exciting, Courageous, Hearbreaking, and TRUE
The video "Pistol Packing Mama: The Story of a B-17" is a superb documentary of the air war over Europe. It is a war documentary with a soul. It tells the story of one crew, the crew of the B-17 "Betty Boop/Pistol Packin' Mama" by way of contemporary interviews with the crewmen, outstanding live-action footage, backed with music from the period. As a historian, I have seen a great many videos about the air war. Till now, the best I'd seen was the original "Memphis Belle" story shot during the war (not to be confused with the Hollywood movie of some ten years ago). And the top Hollywood film of the air war over Europe and the men who fought it is the classic "Twelve O'Clock High", with Gregory Peck. "Pistol Packing Mama" combines the live-action drama of "Memphis Belle" with the psycological insights of "Twelve O'Clock High". The film is packed full of expertly-edited actual battle footage, taken both from the cameras of B-17's and from gun cameras on enemy planes. The furious air battles outside the planes are interspersed with scenes of the men struggling to stay alive inside. The video has the finest collection of live-action footage I've seen in any one place.
But "Pistol Packin' Mama" isn't just a battle video. It probes the memories and the emotions of the men who flew her. In 1990, the writers and producers assembled the surviving men of the crew of "Pistol Packin' Mama" and interviewed each one. This crew was the lead crew for the 390th Bomb Group on many occasions. They were the plane the Luftwaffe wanted to shoot down to disrupt the formation. They faced great danger together and in the process formed a bond that would last forever.

In the course of the video, the producer takes the viewer from each crewman's early years (just enough to let the viewer get a sense of each's personality and history), through the basic training of the different crew members (using actual footage), through their first reactions to the air base at Framlingham, England. We then watch the young crew take to the skies for their first missions. The year is 1943, and the bombers have yet to receive the kind of fighter escort that would improve their odds later in the war. A crew had to fly 25 missions before they could go home. The fact was, the odds of surviving to the 25th mission were only one in three. Scenes of intense battles in the air are interspersed with the words and reflections from the interviews. We feel their pain when the waist gunner, Baumgardner, is shot and killed in the course of one fierce battle. We listen to the men describe watching friends go down in flames. In one particularly poignant moment, we are there as a crewman describes watching one of his best friends in another plane struggling to escape his burning bomber through the cockpit window and then disappearing in a blinding explosion as the plane is torn apart. We go on passes to London, where the men try to forget the war and where they live hard knowing that they may never live out the next day.

All of the crewman are eloquent and hold nothing back in their recollections. It is interesting to see how ten men with such different personalities were able to form such a tight bond as crew and friends, a bond that survives to this day. Another poignant moment in the film is when one man remembers looking over at his fellow crewman, and both of them showing in their expressions that they are saying goodbye and that they don't expect to live out the mission. And the narrator reads the letter that Navigator Gus Mencow leaves behind for his mother in the event of his death.

This is a brilliant video, and should be watched by all who are interested in the air war in Europe, especially the men in the B-17's. "Pistol Packin' Mama" flew on some of the toughest missions of the air war. Her crew has held nothing back in telling the story. This video will make you laugh, cheer, and cry, but most of all, it will allow you to see what it was really like. You will come away from it with a better understanding of the sacrifices that have been made for the freedom we so take for granted today.

The video lasts about an hour, and has an unobtrusive soundtrack of vintage music of the early forties. It is masterfully put together, as good as anything you are liable to see on PBS or the networks. I recommend it very highly.