Have been watching "Midway" the movie and the documentary tonight. No idea why the History cable channel chose to play both films over and over. Took a VCR tape of both--slightly imperfect. Hope to get some sounds from them.
Sorry, no clear sight of B-17 props. My instinct says the props turn INWARD on each side--less torque effect if engines go down on one side--but I have no support for that. Maybe a B-17 will show up at the air show end of May.
Interesting color observations (remembering that old color film often tends toward bluish):
---dark blue Navy Buffaloes and f4f's.
---Other Navy and Marine aircraft are a kind of light gray to faint blue-gray.
---B-17's seem to have a slightly darker and duller brown than "our" plane. Not all have apparent camouflage, though the old WWII shots are fuzzy.
---Japanese bombers are a fairly light brown. Some are camo shade with a touch of green, but not heavy or deep green.
--SBD's used as scouts as well as PB-Ys.
--PB-Y's have retractable floats for water landings (which I knew).
--Zeroes and some other Jap aircraft have a definite silver-gray skin with metallic highlights. Only saw one glimpse of white on aircraft bottom.
--Some of the flights shown are quite large, 15 or more aircraft. Have no proof this is authentic, though the film mentiions a U.S. torpedo bomber attack of 35 planes (or therabouts).
Cheers, --W
New MidwayB17 - separate right and left wing prop control
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Thanks for that Woody. I know the P38 has contra-rotating props, and the game makes provision for them. I'm less sure about other aircraft. I'm fairly sure than on the Lancaster for example, all props turn the same way, ditto the Mosquito. The "Sally-B" will be doing the British air shows so I'll also try to discover which is right.
The other observations are also interesting. Knew about those retractable floats on the PBY (since I had the Airfix model when I was .... well a while ago
)
The other observations are also interesting. Knew about those retractable floats on the PBY (since I had the Airfix model when I was .... well a while ago

Moggy
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Looking again at the first few seconds of the B17 clip from the John Ford Midway footage, I'm fairly certain all the props are moving in the same direction.
Moggy
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