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Customer Reviews of The Wild Blue Yonder - The United States Air Force Story

The Absolute Worst in Air Power Videos
I am a war-bird lover so I may have slightly higher standards than the average Joe, but even Joe would probably leave the theater on this one. This video was created by a crew who did not know anything about air combat, had likely found or obtained rights to USAAF, USAF and USN footage and spliced it together haphazardly with an accompanying sound track devoid of virtually any significant facts on the scenes being shown. Probably purely a money-making venture with absolutely no addition to this body of knowledge or interest.

Yes there were a few facts to be fair - very few. But hardly a single ID of any plane type of the literally hundreds shown in this bullet train video from Kitty Hawk to Kuwait. A tremendous opportunity squandered in this film.

The film starts out with technical trouble. For the first minute or so, the film itself was really jumpy... it couldn't be watched. Random scenes spliced together... first 30's, then poor-color 50's, then 20's, then WW2 carrier scenes - an unintelligible hodgepodge of airplanes of this generation and that... made no sense at all. Whoa!!

Then it settled down with a narrator, of sorts. Problem was the Mr. Nobody narrator did not know a blessed thing about the topic he was talking about. For example, all kinds of WW-I types went unidentified. We have a WW-I dog fight film: GREAT - but it's over in a few seconds then on to... planes taking off in fast motion! We did have, I believe, rare (I've never seen them before) "in-bird" footage of a real WW-1 dog fight at 5,000 ft! Very exciting!! But who were these brave men? What side were they on? Even just a smidgen of facts or tactics would have made this much more enjoyable. Instead we got just an obvious description of what was on the screen in between military propaganda and faked sound effects.

Hey! There's Eddie Rickenbacher himself - America's top WW-1 ace!! Smiling in front of his own hat-in-ring Spad(?)- but there he goes - sadly anonymous. But the same scene shows up again later - and again anonymous. How could you guys not mention Eddie??!!

WW-2 comes in predictably with the Flying Tigers for 5 seconds and then on to Jimmy Dolittle's brave Tokyo bombing. But not a word of Jimmy's petrol situation forcing his crew to ditch in China...

Europe? Not a word on the fighter war, a truly amazing story and, with the Mustang, one of the Air Force's finest moments. Come to think of it - not a single ETO fighter in the whole film! Our B-17 heroes are duly noted, thankfully. Rest in peace, boys. Of course you'd think they didn't need fighters from this film, all the turrets ablazing and FW-190's falling from the sky. And finally cleaning things up, there was as if on cue Enola Gay.

A little Korea.. P-80s but no Sabres - what war is this? Ending the show was a little Sadaam bashing, Scud intercepting, cruise missle through the open window kind of stuff, but with nothing new. The video, thankfully stopped abruptly here.

It may be that the main problem here is that this grandiosely titled production: "The United States Air Force Story" with the USAF seal on the front of the box, sets your expectations for something substantial, I think it's fair to say. Then when the contents therein do not meet this expectation, disappointment is a foregone conclusion. A more apt title would be: "Some Random Film Clips of US War Planes and Combat in the 20th Century." Then you couldn't be disappointed. But if you're trying to learn something about air combat or the Air Force with this lemon - forget it.