What I love about this scene is that Stanley was able to ratch up the suspense with a simple blip on a radar screen. If done today, you know a ham-handed director would CGI the scene to death.
Considering the special effects technology of the day and the fact that almost nothing was known about the interior of a real B52, this sequence is pretty incredible
It's weird how you love this bomber crew and cheer for them to survive and complete their mission, even though you know that if they do so the whole world gets destroyed. These guys are portrayed as utterly competent aviators and courageous fighters, the only ones in the movie who actually know what they are doing, and yet they don't know they are on the wrong mission.
Helium Road The crew believes that the United States is a nuclear wasteland and that they must extract revenge.
6 лет назад
I'm sorry, I might be disapointing you a bit, but I'm French and I can tell you my country is not a "sole self defense" country. They are still involved in other countries' war (such as Afghanistan, Mali, Syria,...) and they still have an impressive nuclear stockpile, complete with "tactical" battlefield nuclear artillery (the ones in the low kilotonnes yields), under a "du faible au fort" doctrine that doesn't rule out the option of a first strike. Of course, France is not as belligerent as are the US, China or Russia for example, but they not as pacifist as Germany. If you want good examples of "self defense" armies, check out Switzerland or Sweden.
This is a comedy and yet has these still-seemingly-accurate flight scenes that are more suspenseful than entire movies made today. I really miss Kubrick!
He's so well-known now that many people don't realize that this was James Earl Jones' first movie. He had had five TV appearances at that time, but was primarily a stage actor.
One of my very favorite movies. When I was younger I was so inspired by Major Kong and his crew that I wanted to be B-1 pilot in S.A.C. when I grew up. Ended up in the U.S. Navy instead. Really loved this movie and the B-52 scenes gave some great diversion from the comedy of Peter Sellers.
Old Boeing would be proud! The engine failure Fire Severe Damage or Separation Checklist recited by slim Pickens and actioned by ACE is timeless and correct.Damn they made a good movie!
Correct: The procedure for "Engine Fire" would have required the throttle(s) for the affected engine(s) be pulled back to idle and the "Fire Wall Shutoff Handles" for the affected engine(s) be pulled out to cut off all sources of fuel and bleed air to and from that engine(s).
Wouldn't be surprising, around that time nukes were the answer to everything. The approach to air-defense shifted quickly from guns to conventional missiles to nuclear missiles. The nuclear missiles didn't have to get all that close to their target to inflict damage, and one missile could take out an entire formation. Before seeing your comment I pondered how an explosion from 1 mile away could do so much damage, but upon seeing your suggestion it makes total sense. Likewise as well as the blast damage we hear it scramble all their intercoms and radios (even though the intercoms would be entirely wired, not wireless) implying a major EMP. I would expect the B-52 would be designed to withstand an EMP just to survive that from the nuke it just dropped, but maybe it still would temporarily mess with their intercoms.
Yup. Similar to US Nike Hercules missiles - surface to air missile with a nuclear warhead. Targeting was primitive back then so they used a small nuke to improve their odds of a kill.
@@brianwesley28 And the obvious question: "Why wouldn't such a missile activate the Dooms Day machine"? From the dialog, the Russian Ambassador said (in affect) that under a "clearly defined set of circumstances" the Dooms Day weapons would be activated. Obviously, the Russians excluded the detonation of one of their own nuclear devices from the algorithm used for such a detonation?
I flew B-52's in the early 70's. Had a fire in the forward radar bay, in front of the Navigator/Radar Navigator positions. The smoke from down below spread to the cockpit very fast. As I remember it just billowed up through the throttle quadrant. Within a minute the INSIDE of the cockpit went "IFR" and we could barely see any switches or controls, let alone see out through the wind screen. As our visibility quickly dropped to almost zero...we just could see enough to hit the internal pressure switch just before the cockpit went completely black and the smoke vented over board quite fast. Luckily we reacted fast enough. If we had delayed just another few seconds....we couldn't have seen ANYTHING in the cockpit. THIS fire in the movie was MUCH worse than the fire we had. The cockpit would have been filled with smoke much faster.
So a rare case where things in reality would have been more serious and harrowing than in the movie. From what I've heard nobody with the liberty to speak of it had even seen the inside of a B-52 at the time this movie was made, so the interior was entirely speculative based on what was publicly known of other large aircraft at the time. When this did become public, it was found the movie makers were surprisingly close to reality. Glad you managed to vent the cockpit in time, that sounds terrifying!
@@RCAvhstape One could hardly have NOT worn a mask, at the time. From what I've heard, the B-52 crash, in Greenland, with REAL nuclear weapons was caused by the same problem. A fire somewhere in the aircraft caused the crew to lose visual contact with their surroundings. The Aircraft Commander made the decision to bail out and let the aircraft go down on the ice cap.
When the missile hits all interior shots had to have been handheld. The film and sound editing are gripping. A satire this film may have been from the start but I still get the distinct impression all involved very much wanted to get this part right.
It's the dramatic scenes such as this one and the final bomb run that put the sharp edge onto the satire. It also has the psychological effect of pulling the audience into rooting for this bomber crew who, if successful in their mission, will unwittingly trigger off the end of the world.
Shane Rimmer, the co-pilot, did a TON of voice work for Gerry Anderson, including the voice of Scott Tracy, the pilot of Thunderbird 1, as well as voices for characters in Captain Scarlet and Joe 90. He has a very distinctive voice.
Dr. Strangelove was a spoof on Dr. Edward Teller, the father of the Hydrogen Bomb. I met Dr. Teller once and Sellers really had his voice down. Gen. Turgidson was a spoof on Gen. LeMay, SAC Commander. Soviet Premier KIsov was a spoof on Premier Khrushchev, Soviet President. At the time, this movie scared the hell out of the Russians.
Even if it wasn’t intentional. For instance nuclear accidents like the Damascus event would’ve taken out 3 or four US States if the warhead had detonated on impact. It was found five miles away from the silo, in a ditch, fully intact.
Nuclear warhead missile which also produced an EMP damaging the aircraft's electrical systems. Thus the instant distortion in the aircraft's communicationsystem before the pressure wave arrived.
@@arcpeter Using a nuclear weapon to destroy an incoming bomber is NOT out of the question. Especially given the remoteness of the area. And to get the damage, that the B-52 incurred...from a mile away...one would have to ASSUME it was a nuclear war head. But of course, using a nuclear weapon, even by the Soviets, if we understand the story line, would have triggered the doomsday machine, so this portion of the story line IS a bit confusing. But so what? "Good enough for government work" as we used to say.
@@badguy1481 It is out of question. SAMs were never armed with nukes. There were anti-ballistic missile systems armed with nukes which were designed to destroy incoming ICBMs with nuclear explosion. Russians developed A-35 system and Americans developed Sentinel system. 1972 ABM Treaty allowed just one area per country to be protected by such systems. A-35 was deployed around Moscow and Sentinel was deployed in Grand Forks air force base. Once again, they were targeting ICBMs not bombers.
@@arcpeter It was not at all out of the question, American Nike SAMs had nuke warheads in the 60s, American interceptors had nukes (Genie rocket and AIM-26 Falcon missile) for shooting down Soviet bombers, so given Kubrick's lack of hard information about Soviet weapons it makes perfect sense to assume the Soviets used low yield nukes as well.
Over North Vietnam, the B-52s were flying in formation so their ECM could overlap and protect each other. Whereas in this scene, the B-52 was going it alone.
For many years in my construction days my younger guys learned “DSO toCaptain we have an unidentifiied radar blip”when things went wrong .Sort of code for we got problems here.that scene is still electrafying today
I was a crew member on a KC-135R in the 1990’s when a fire broke out underneath the cockpit in a transformer rectifier. Smoke filled the cockpit very fast. I can’t imagine taking a close hit from a SAM.
I grew up near a SAC base. I totally believe the dedication and courage portrayed by the BUFF crew was accurate. You may call them fools. I dont. Their mission was to deliver their device on target. God bless them because that kind of courage and skill kept the USA free.
As a former B-52 crewman, I don't believe any crewmembers believed, that they would survive their mission over the Soviet Union. There were just too many things weighted against them. And even if they did, they knew their home base would have been vaporized along with their families, just minutes after they were out of range from their home base (IF they were lucky enough...to be out of range)
No, I don’t think Kubrick meant for Major Kong and his crew to appeal foolish. Major Kong may be funny and quirky, but he is smart, professional, and completes the mission he was ordered to do despite the difficulty and sacrifice to himself. I believe that was the message of this movie. Nobody here is the villain, even General Ripper - he was just out of his mind. It’s the system that is scary.
SuperSix Delta Good question, the Air Force wanted to know that, too... turns out Kubrick’s team extrapolated it from a single photo in an in-house AF magazine that (whoops) got published, I have two books on Kubrick somewhere, I can’t cite which one I got it from. They didn’t know what the actual bombs looked like, so they made their best guess
My understanding was a lot of it was speculation based on what was public knowledge, as well as looking at other similar large aircraft of the era - they could probably assume it to look somewhat similar to a 707, a fellow big Boeing. They got it surprisingly close to reality. Plus what ActuallyCPOS said, but I don't think that explains all of it.
I think read they reconstructed the interior from a photograph in a British Flying magazine. Based on all the available pictures today, they did a damn good job. I mean the cabin layout is spot on.
I presume that the close call with the Soviet SA-2 missile is what caused the B-52's bomb bay doors to short out which prompted Major Kong, USAF, to hotwire the system so they could open when the B-52 reached its target.
The SA-2 (S75 Divina) did not have that sort of range. The closest thing would have been the SA-4 (2K11 Krug), which was still in development when Dr. Strangelove was released. The SA-4 entered service in 1967, and, it's effective range was less than 50 miles. On the US side, the Nike Hercules had the ability to engage targets over 80 miles away. I would say that they based that scenario using the Nike data, on the assumption that the Soviets had a similar missile system.
@@edriveiro5625 I agree. The final sequence when the missile exploded was more akin to a Nike Hercules detonating its W31 20 KT nuclear warhead. I don't think the Soviets had a SAM with a nuclear warhead, even on their longer-range SA-5 system.
Keep in mind that all this discussion of what missiles the Soviets would have had at the time (nothing with this range or nuclear-armed) is based on what we know now, in the 21st centrury, with the Soviet Union collapsed and all that stuff declassified. At the time the movie makers - and probably even the USAF - wouldn't have known for sure what the Soviets had. Them having a long-range supersonic nuclear missile probably felt entirely plausible, even if our intelligence didn't know about it, or this information wasn't public. More likely the Americans thought they did when they didn't - the Soviets were pretty good at tricking the West into thinking they were more technologically advanced and heavily armed than they actually were.
@@Sacto1654 If the missile in this scene were nuclear it would've showered the crew with neutron radiation and incapacitated them pretty quick. That's my understanding of how low-yield anti-aircraft nukes worked; even if the smallish blast doesn't kill the target, the neutrons will zorch the crew.
What’s depicted in the movie is actually amazingly accurate if the missile were the S-200/SA-5, which was deployed by the USSR about two years after the movie came out. In the movie, they detect the missile at 60 miles. The first version of the SA-5 had a max range of about 100 miles. It could also be loaded with a 25kt nuclear warhead. From about a mile away, they’d get about 100 rem of radiation, which would be enough to make you sick, but not for maybe a day or so. The blast at that distance would be about 5 psi which is enough to knock over many houses. Given that the plane is aerodynamic, it seems totally believable to me that it this might damage but not completely destroy a B-52. The number of correct details in the B-52 scenes overall makes me think that Kubrick had some really good inside sources.
After nuke armed SAM detonated about 2 miles to ship's port (left side) the shockwave hit it broadside. Which would induce uncontrolled out of envelope side slip and exceed load limit on vertical stabilizer. I am not certain how engine would inhale a shockwave from side. I imagine that port engines would compressor stall and flame out. But starboard engines, shielded by fuselage would continue turning and burning.
During my first viewing of this film so very (very) long ago this scene was the first indication to this impressionable viewer that this film was SCARY.
What's Kong reacting to when he says "there goes six" at 2:52 ? The center panel gauges show engine 6 still matching the good engines at that point. Is this a continuity error or is there something else that lets Kong know engine 6 is failing?
LOL! I imagine something like this: DSO to Driver - Looks like we have a slowdown ahead. Confirmed. Definite slowdown ahead. Range 5 miles. Commence evasive redirect. Stay right at the fork.
The technical name is Arriflex. Used in quite a few scenes in this movie to give a documentary feel to parts of it. Also useful when filming in a space too cramped for the full camera rig.
Check out the blacked out silhouette image of Major Kong wearing the cowboy hat @ 2:34. It makes it look like a classic western. Kubrick had a genius photographer's eye. The whole scene is full of well-blocked & crafted images and hand-held camera work adds to the crew's urgency, battling the chaos of the scene.
A very powerful scene. Incredibly good build up of tension. Just one flaw. Shouldn't the radar operator have to inform the pilots in which direction the missile deflects? That information must be very crucial for further evasive action it think.
When the Radar DSO first identified the track as a missile he told the captain to "commence evasive action RIGHT". The missile (an early SAM with a mediocre tracking radar by today's standards) deflects off to the left due to the bomber moving right of its track. The pilot would know this, so to keep radio comms to a minimum at a crutial moment, the DSO just uses the phrase "continue evasive action".
@@RCAvhstape It looks like they're flying "on the deck," very low altitude, dipping into valleys, trying to stay out of sight of radar, so they're probably low enough to not need oxygen.
@@quillmaurer6563 Certainly during a fire, on board, they would have put their oxygen masks on. I went through a fire on a B-52, and I guarantee we HAD to put our maskes on! Of course, for the movie, they needed to have very clear audio projection. With masks on,... all anyone could hear would be mumbling.
@@badguy5554 It would have made sense for them to put their masks on once there was a fire, but I doubt they'd be wearing such before the missile hit. If there's the possibility of explosion and fire you probably wouldn't want the oxygen mask until it's already lit, wouldn't put it on pre-emptively, as if a crewmember were to catch on fire having oxygen flowing would make it much worse. Once other things - but not yourself - are on fire, then the oxygen is a good idea. Though in line with what you're saying, I see a lot of movie scenes where characters who realistically should be wearing oxygen masks, full face helmets, armor, or other face coverings often don't, or have their masks hanging off to the side rather than on. As well as making it easier to hear dialogue, I think it's preferred to have the characters' faces visible, for the audience's sake. At least important characters, often less important characters - especially villain henchmen or enemy soldiers - have their faces covered even if it doesn't make a ton of sense in the plot. A matter of who's a good guy we should care about versus a generic baddie we shouldn't.
Whether in a medium or long range bomber or a fighter or any type of aircraft, the surface-to-air missile (SAM) is your WORST enemy and your greatest threat. Notice how this long range bomber barely survived a glancing blow from a SAM that detonated a mile away
I believe we can assume from the distance the missile was from the plane that the missile had a low yield nuclear weapon war head. A standard SA-2 would have had a conventional munition as its war head and would have had to have detonated much closer to the aircraft to do that much damage.
Kubrick did miss something though. The plane's control surfaces never move. It would have been a nightmare to co-ordinate them with the movement pf the model and background though.
My Dad was career USAF and I did 4 years active. The American people would be astonished at some of the IDIOTS who were high ranking officers.. We used to say "our mission succeeded in SPITE of some of our Officers". lol
I believe you. I'm sure that stupidity and incompetence of higher-ups has (fortunately) prevented absolute tyranny at all levels in this country, as of 2019.
That’s every branch... you have good and bad, but it’s just amazing how many good ones go bad after a certain rank. It’s like they lose touch with with any common sense they had before. Happens on the Enlisted side also
We never had had that problem in Vietnam. Our Commanding Officer and his Executive were always drunk. So we could usually make all the decisions we needed to make to accomplish the mission.
Excellent, wonder how they would do with a remake of this classic today? Though a comedy it gave a serious look at what would happen should someone takes matters into their own hands. Politicians didn't learn anything from this - a comedy - or the more dark realistic jone - 'Fail Safe'
"Now then, a specific and clearly defined set of circumstances under which the bombs are to detonated is programmed into a tape memory bank." As Dr. Strangelove pointed out, the Doomsday Machine would be set off only under certain conditions. A surface nuclear detonation at or airburst over a site that would logically qualify as a target, and a blast in the megaton range, would be the most likely conditions programmed into the control computer.
Also, SAM sites with nuclear-tipped missiles would have been situated well away from cities and other major targets where sensors for the Doomsday Machine would have been located. In other words, it's probable that the machine couldn't have detected such blasts in the first place. This would have had to have been taken into account by the Doomsday Machine's designers.
Why was the tip of the B-52's vertical tail chopped off in 1959? In the design of the B-52G, considerable attention was paid to reducing the structural weight. Different materials were used in the construction of the airframe, and the wing structure was extensively redesigned. The most visible difference was a vertical tail which was reduced in size.
other than actually blowing up the equipment self destruct charge, no it probably would not. An electromagnetic pulse is generated when a nuclear explosion occurs at the upper edge of the atmosphere. It is caused by x-rays and gamma rays ionizing the atmosphere asymmetrically and interacting with the earth's magnetic field, at lower altitudes the ionization is balanced and cancles out.
I worked on B-52's during the early 1970's. At that time most of the electronics onboard still used vacuum tubes. Vacuum tubed equipment is much less susceptible to EMP than newer equipment that uses transistors, IC's and microprocessors. The newer equipment used in military aircraft today that is all solid state has protection devices built in to absorb the EMP and prevent damage to the electronics.
Yes...the Soviet, and American Surface to Air MIssiles had nuclear warheads, in order to take out enemy nuclear-armed bombers. Their warhead range was in Kilotons. Presuming the SAM in this scene detonated on the otherside of one of the mountains, the B-52 would have been heavily damaged, not destroyed outright.
Troy Macgill thats the thing, what was *known* in those days had to be *confirmed* unlike today. The US military had speculations but not as much solid intel. Just to be safe , the planners of that day erred on the side of caution and just assumed the soviets were neck n neck or above what the US had, thus compelling bigger budgets, more research, development , etc. when dealing with a nation that has nuckear capabilities, a developed system military research and production while keeping a *tight* lid on what it does.... well, its best to just assume the worst, keep your campaign contributors in military industrial complex happy, and pushing for escelating 'defense' budgets, right..?
Even if their mission was to intervene in the internal affairs of another country, participate in the unnecessary slaughter of 2 million people, based on a lie (the Gulf of Tonkin incident when a radar blip was falsely interpreted as an attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats). Pressure, yes. Grace, not so sure. Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City, is a booming world city, and life there indistinguishable from noncommunist Bangkok.
Yeah , well now they see capitalism is the best system of government. Incidentally Vietnam is trying to forge military ties with the U. S. Why? because China is trying to become the dominant power in the South China sea. Vietnam hopes Uncle Sam checks China's ambitions in the region.
@@badguy1481 It was their country. Learn some history. Ho Chi Minh helped the U.S. OSS fight the Japanese while the French collaborated; the French and Japanese forced rice farmers to make war materiel; millions starved. FDR said the French needed to get out of Southeast Asia. Then he died. We paid 80% of the costs of the French occupation between 1945 and 54. It was a war of independence against a brutal colonial overlord. In 1954, after the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu, there was a peace agreement. Temporary division, elections within two years. As Ho was a national hero, we knew he would win in a landslide. So the U.S. prevented the election. And 2-3 million Vietnamese died because we intervened in a country where we had no business, no strategy, no moral right. "They got what they deserved." They deserved the promise of the U.S. in the Atlantic Charter to have the right to self-determination.
@@briankgruber It was NOT their country anymore than South Korea belonged to North Korea. The FRENCH owned Vietnam until 1954. Part of the treaty between France and the Viet Minh drew the line between North and South. Yes, there were supposed to be elections which the government of the South and the USA cancelled because of the Vietminh (Vietcong) penetration of the South made the results of such an election dubious.. Somewhat like the US election in 2020.
Samuel Moulds -- No, the anti-aircraft missile the Russians fired at the B-52 did NOT set off the doomsday device. That didn't happen until the B-52 dropped its bomb.
you know i just realize something... Wouldn't the USSR had scramble Mig-25's the moment the President notify them of the attack? since they where in service at this point
MiG-25s entered service in 1970, the type literally just had its first ever flight in the year the movie was released in. The best interceptor type avaliable at the time depending on whether it's 1962 to 1964 was either the MiG-21 Fishbed, Su-11 Fishpot-C, Yak-28P Firebar or the Tu-28 Fiddler. Soviet interceptors were also highly reliant on Ground Control Intercept to locate their targets doctrinally even when good fighter mounted radar was available
@@chemiker494 Again, the MiG-25 wasn't even in service yet, and nobody in the west outside intel agencies had any inkling it even existed. The Foxbat entered service with the Soviet Air force in 1970, six years after this film takes place.
