Aircraft in fiction

This article is about real-world aircraft appearing in works of fiction. For fictional aircraft, see list of fictional aircraft or fictional military aircraft.

Numerous real-world aircraft have appeared in fiction over the decades, including in books, films, toys, TV programs, video games and other media. These appearances spotlight the popularity of different models of aircraft, and showcase the different models for the general public.

The years between World War I and World War II saw extensive use of the new technology, aircraft, in the new medium, film. In the early 1920s Hollywood studios made dozens of now-obscure 'aerial Westerns' with leads such as Tom Mix and Hoot Gibson, where the role of the horse was taken by aircraft, or used aircraft as nothing more than vehicles for stunts to excite audiences. In 1926 the first 'proper' aviation film was made; Wings is a story of two pilots who sign up to fly and fight in World War I. Made with the co-operation of the then-Department of War (a relationship that continues to this day), it used front-line military aircraft of the day such as the Thomas-Morse MB-3 and Boeing PW-9, flown by military pilots. Future United States Air Force Generals Hap Arnold and Hoyt Vandenberg were among the military officers involved with the production, Arnold as a technical consultant and Vandenberg as one of the pilots. Wings was a box-office hit when it achieved general release in 1929 and went on the win the award for Best Production at the first Academy Awards.

In Fascist Italy in the 1930s, aviation-themed films were used as propaganda tools to complement the massed flights led by Italo Balbo in promoting the regime domestically and abroad. One such film was the most successful Italian film of the pre-World War II era. Luciano Serra pilota (Luciano Serra, pilot) was inextricably linked to the Fascist government via Mussolini's son Vittorio, who was the driving force behind the film's production. The film, set between the year 1921 and the Italo-Abyssinian War, was used to compare the allegedly-moribund state of aviation in pre-Fascist Italy with the purported power of the Regia Aeronautica and Italian aviation in general in the 1930s. However, by the time that Luciano Serra pilota was shown at the 1938 Venice Film Festival, the link between aviation and Fascism had already been firmly established in the minds of the Italian people through widespread depictions of aircraft in a variety of media. For example there was an entire branch of the Futurist Art movement devoted to aviation, known as Aeropittura (Aeropainting). While many of the Aeropittura works were devoted to flight rather than aircraft per se, some did celebrate Italian aviation exploits, such as Alfredo Ambrosi's Il volo su Vienna (The Flight over Vienna) which depicted in Futurist style the World War I exploit of Gabriele d'Annunzio; although the city of Vienna is shown in abstract in accordance with the aims of Aeropittura – namely to show the dynamism and excitement of flight – the Ansaldo SVA aircraft are very carefully and accurately rendered.

A-1 Skyraider

Douglas AD-1 Skyraiders fly RESCAP missions over a downed Grumman F9F Panther and Sikorsky HO3S-1 in Korea in the climax of the 1954 release, The Bridges at Toko-Ri.

A flight of US Navy AD-1s stood in for unavailable P-47 Thunderbolts in the 1962 production The Longest Day, based on the Cornelius Ryan book of the same title.

The A-1 Skyraider made appearances in the 1968 The Green Berets film loosely based on the 1965 book by Robin Moore.

"Sandy" escort missions were depicted in the 1991 John Milius film Flight of the Intruder based on the Stephen Coonts novel of the same title.

It was also featured as one of the many aircraft providing close air support during the First Battle of the Ia Drang Valley Campaign in Mel Gibson's 2002 film We Were Soldiers, based on the book We Were Soldiers Once… And Young by Lieutenant General (Ret.) Hal Moore and reporter Joseph L. Galloway.

CGI-rendered US Navy Skyraiders were shown in the 2007 Werner Herzog film Rescue Dawn, set during the Vietnam War.

A-4 Skyhawk

The Douglas A-4 Skyhawk was featured as an aggressor aircraft in the film Top Gun. Producers reimbursed the U.S. Navy $8,600 an hour for flight time used in the film.

A Skyhawk from the Israeli Air Force is featured in the opening scene of the film The Sum of All Fears and on the cover of the first and second editions of the novel the film was based on.

The TA-4J Skyhawk operated by the Collings Foundation appeared in the 2011 Warner Bros. Green Lantern film.

A-4K Skyhawks of the RNZAF were featured in the 1977 movie Sleeping Dogs based on C.K. Stead's book "Smith's Dream".

A-6 Intruder

The 1991 film Flight of the Intruder centered around two naval aviators during the Vietnam War who take their Grumman A-6 Intruder on an unauthorized bombing raid on Hanoi, from the Stephen Coonts novel of the same name.

A-10 Thunderbolt II

A-10 Thunderbolt II

The evil Gobots character Bad Boy and the heroic Transformers character Powerglide both disguise themselves as Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt IIs.

The popularity of the A-10s in the 2007 Transformers film led to the toy company releasing a minor character named Wingblade that turned into A-10s.

A-10s were featured as the aircraft used by the human resistance to combat the machines of Skynet in the 2009 film Terminator Salvation.

A-10s were also featured in the movie Jarhead where they attack friendly US Marine forces in a friendly fire incident.

A-26/B-26 Invader

French Armée de l'Air Douglas A-26 Invaders appeared in the 1964 John Frankenheimer film The Train as Allied aircraft bombing a railroad yard.

Two B-26 airtankers were prominently featured in the 1989 Steven Spielberg film, Always. The flying for the film was performed by well-known film pilot Steve Hinton and Dennis Lynch, the owners of the A-26s.

A6M Zero

The Mitsubishi A6M Zero was featured in the films The Final Countdown, Pearl Harbor, and Tora! Tora! Tora!. The Zero was also depicted in the 1976 film Midway; however real Zeros were not used. Modified T-6 Texans were used in both Tora! Tora! Tora! and Midway to depict A6M2 Type 21 Zero fighters, and some footage from the former was reused in the latter. One Type 52 Zero, reportedly the only airworthy copy in the world, was used in Pearl Harbor.

Adam A500

The Adam A500 was featured in the 2006 film Miami Vice, and was flown by the character Ricardo Tubbs as the drug runners' aircraft of choice.

Adam Aircraft CEO Rick Adam stated at the time the aircraft was cast in the film, in a self-promotional press release:

The Adam Aircraft A500 is the ideal airplane for 'Miami Vice'. The A500 signature twin-boom profile reaches the level of high style and high performance necessary to meet the standards of a Michael Mann production, and the footage we've seen shows off the airplane's extraordinary look, along with its superior speed and maneuverability.

Aérospatiale Gazelle

A heavily modified Aerospatiale SA341G Gazelle was the center piece in the airborne action film Blue Thunder. The same helicopter appeared in short-lived TV series by the same name starring James Farentino. The modified Gazelle went on to be used in the TV mini-series Amerika.

The Gazelle also a played a role in the television film Deadly Encounter starring Larry Hagman.

Another modified Gazelle was used as a Russian attack helicopter in the Sylvester Stallone film, Rambo III. In one scene, the helicopter was shot down by the main character.

AH-64 Apache

The Boeing AH-64 Apache had a major role in the film Fire Birds (or Wings of the Apache).

The Transformers character Spinister disguises himself as an Apache helicopter.

"Gunship" is an AH-64 Apache helicopter simulation that was released by Microprose in 1986.

The AH-64 also made an appearance in the film Toy Soldiers.

In the film G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra Apaches provide air cover for a convoy of nanotechnology-based weapons.

Airspeed Horsa

The assault on what would later be known as the Pegasus Bridge over the Caen Canal in France by British commandos landing in Airspeed Horsa gliders was depicted in the 1962 war epic The Longest Day. Only one Horsa replica was actually constructed.

Ten mock-up Airspeed Horsa gliders were fabricated for the filming of A Bridge Too Far, but they were non-flyable.

Albatros D.III

The Clive Cussler novel The Mediterranean Caper featured an Albatros D.III. The World War I German biplane, with a top speed of 103 mph, managed to destroy several fictional F-105 Starfire fighters and Douglas C-133 Cargomasters.

Antonov An-12

In the 2005 film Lord of War an Antonov AN-12 is shown smuggling illegal arms in Africa.

Antonov An-124

An Antonov An-124 appears in the James Bond film Die Another Day.

Antonov An-225

For the fictional An-500 aircraft seen in the film 2012 or the transport aircraft seen in Battlefield: Bad Company 2, see List of fictional aircraft.

The Decepticon character Jetstorm from the 2007 Transformers film line is based on the Antonov An-225. This toy shares its body design with Cybertron Jetfire, Classics Fireflight and Universe Air Raid.

Auster

An Auster III depicted an Auster V in A Bridge Too Far.

Avro 504

An Avro 504 appears in Aces High, being used for photo reconnaissance, a role in which the aircraft was widely used.

An Avro 504 also appears in the film "Reach for the Sky" as the training aircraft in which a young Douglas Bader learns to fly.

Avro Ashton

An Avro Ashton, in its six-engined, Olympus testbed form appeared as the fictitious Phoenix airliner in Cone of Silence (1960), based on the novel of the same name by David Beaty, a former BOAC pilot. This concerned the take-off problems of the Phoenix, and the subsequent accident investigation; it was based on two take off accidents to the de Havilland Comet.

Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow

In 1997, the CBC broadcast The Arrow miniseries. The production used a combination of archival film, remote-control flying models and computer animation for the static, ground and flying sequences. The film won numerous awards including the Gemini that year.

Avro Lancaster

Avro Lancaster

Len Deighton's novel Bomber describes an attack by Royal Air Force Avro Lancasters on Krefeld, Germany during which a series of unplanned incidents leads to the carpet bombing of a small town nearby.

The Lancaster was central to the second half of the British film The Dam Busters. This film is a dramatisation of the real-life Operation Chastise, which included the forming of the real-life RAF 617 Squadron commanded by Wing Commander Guy Gibson, who was awarded the Victoria Cross (VC), and the real-life bombing of the Möhne, Eder and Sorpe dams in Germany to interrupt water and hydro-electric power supplies to Nazi munitions factories. The film is based upon the books The Dam Busters by Paul Brickhill and Enemy Coast Ahead by Guy Gibson.

Avro Vulcan

See also: Fictional military aircraft § Vindicator

The Avro Vulcan figures in Anthony Gray's 1965 novel The Penetrators, in which an RAF officer attempts to demonstrate a weakness in the North American strategic defense system NORAD by launching a mock attack involving nine Vulcans and some Vickers Valiant tankers for inflight refuelling. The Avro Vulcan is also used in the Bond film Thunderball. In the original Bond novel, the bomber is known as the (fictional) Villiers Vindicator.

Parts from two scrapped Vulcan bombers were used to make the set of the spaceship Nostromo from Ridley Scott's 1979 film Alien.

The spaceship HMS Camden Lock in the BBC2 comedy series Hyperdrive bears the serial number XH558. The set and prop designer, model maker Andrew Glazebrook is quoted that, "Its registration number XH558 is actually that of the Royal Air Force's 'Avro Vulcan' bomber and was suggested by the show's writers, Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil." This direct involvement with the Avro Vulcan and its role as a military aircraft is clearly connected to its science-fiction counterpart.

B-1 Lancer

The 1983 James Bond film Never Say Never Again features a cruise missile launch from a Rockwell B-1 Lancer (although a sequence in which cruise missiles are loaded onto the B-1 was filmed with Concorde SST substituting for the B-1's undercarriage).

The Transformers Decepticon named Windsweeper disguises himself as a B-1 Lancer. A B-1 drops numerous bombs during the climactic battle scene in the 2009 film Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

B-2 Spirit

The Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit appeared in the film The Sum of All Fears.

B-17 Flying Fortress

The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress was the subject of the 1990 Warner Bros. film Memphis Belle.

The first appearance of the Flying Fortress in film was a Y1B-17 in the 1938 M-G-M production Test Pilot, although for the crash scene a Douglas DC-2 was modified to stand in for the bomber, the Army Air Corps being unwilling to risk even having a fire lit next to the scarce type for filming.

B-17Bs of the 132nd Bomb Squadron, 9th Bomb Group, March Field, California ("Land of the Flying Fortress") were featured in the 1941 Paramount Pictures film I Wanted Wings, based on the novel of the same title by 1st Lt. Beirne Lay, Jr.

The self-explanatory 1942 Warner Bros. film Flying Fortress showed Royal Air Force Fortress Is, singly, and in formation.

B-17s appear in the 1943 RKO picture Bombardier, at Kirtland Field, New Mexico.

The 1943 Warner Bros. film Air Force, directed by Howard Hawks, used at least nine B-17B, C and D model Flying Fortresses to depict the early year of World War II, including the attack on Pearl Harbor.

In William Wyler's 1946 film The Best Years of Our Lives, B-17s are prominently featured. The primary male characters hitch a cross country ride in a B-17E Flying Fortress early in the story, and at the conclusion the scrapyard at Chino, California is shown full of disposal B-17s and YB-40s.

B-17s also figured prominently in the Oscar-winning 1949 film Twelve O'Clock High starring Gregory Peck. The film focuses on aviation leadership and the human toll in the USAAF strategy of daylight precision bombing. The U.S. Air Force cooperated in the production of the film, lending aircraft to the producers and allowing filming at Eglin Air Force Base and at Ozark Field. The film featured an actual crash landing of a B-17, piloted by veteran stunt pilot Paul Mantz. The film led to a TV series of the same name, again featuring the B-17.

The other post-war (1948) film about early 8th Air Force bomber operations, MGM's Command Decision, with Clark Gable and Walter Pidgeon, relied primarily on combat footage of Flying Fortresses, although at least one B-17F and one B-17G were utilized for ground filming in California.

A U.S. Coast Guard PB-1G "Dumbo", rescue variant of the B-17, carrying an A-1 lifeboat, was shown in the 1954 film The High and the Mighty, based on the Ernest K. Gann novel of the same name.

The love triangle 1958 Universal International Pictures film The Lady Takes a Flyer about a woman involved with two pilots who trade in war-surplus aircraft, featured at least two B-17s.

One ex-USAAF B-17 Flying Fortress and two ex-U.S. Navy PB-1W Flying Fortresses were retrieved from the boneyard, restored, and flown across the Atlantic Ocean for the making of the 1962 Columbia Pictures film The War Lover, based on a John Hersey novel of the same title.

A French IGN B-17 had an accidental cameo in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 dark cold war comedy Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, when the actual camera ship's shadow appeared on the ice pack below the matted-in B-52 Stratofortress model during Major "King" Kong's attack on Russia.

A B-17G operated by Intermountain Airlines, an actual Central Intelligence Agency front company, fitted with the Fulton recovery system, drops rescue gear to James Bond and his Bond girl in the Bahamas at the conclusion of the 1965 film Thunderball. This aircraft had actually been used by the CIA to insert and recover agents in the arctic that had checked on an abandoned Soviet ice station under Project COLDFEET in 1963.

Two DB-17P former drone-controllers and one B-17F tried to depict The 1000 Plane Raid in 1969. A DB-17P briefly appeared in the bio-pic MacArthur in 1977, still wearing the same markings and paint it had for The 1000 Plane Raid.

The B-17 figures prominently in the book KG 200 by J.D. Gilman and J. Clive about the secret Luftwaffe unit KG 200, which tested and flew many captured Allied aircraft.

B-18 Bolo

Douglas B-18 Bolos appeared in scenes for the 1941 Paramount Pictures film I Wanted Wings, based on the novel of the same title by 1st Lt. Beirne Lay, Jr..

B-18 Bolos are prominently featured in the 1943 RKO picture Bombardier, filmed at Kirtland Field, New Mexico.

B-25 Mitchell

The North American B-25 Mitchell was the focus of the second half of the 2001 film Pearl Harbor, although critics complained that the bomber and its role were being depicted inaccurately.

The Sole Survivor, a 1970 made-for-television film, based loosely on the Lady Be Good, featured a B-25 in the Liberator role.

The Twilight Zone episode King Nine Will Not Return was also similarly based on Lady Be Good, and also used a B-25 in place of the B-24 Liberator.

The B-25 is featured in the 1961 Joseph Heller novel Catch-22 adapted into the 1970 Mike Nichols film which had 17 film unit B-25s in flying condition plus one non-flyable.

The B-25 also had feature roles in the films: Thirty Seconds over Tokyo (1944) (pilot Ted Lawson's account of the Doolittle Raid), Hanover Street (1979) based on a fictional B-25 unit stationed in England, Forever Young (1992), following a B-25 test pilot's story both in the past and present.

The B-25 Mitchell is used by the main characters Zack Snyder's 2011 film Sucker Punch to battle a dragon.

B-26 Marauder

Six Martin B-26C Marauders from MacDill Field, Florida, portrayed Japanese bombers in the 1943 Howard Hawks film Air Force.

B-29 Superfortress

The Boeing B-29 Superfortress has played an important role in several Hollywood films, particularly as that dubbed the Enola Gay which dropped the first atomic bomb. The Enola Gay was depicted in Above and Beyond and The Beginning or the End. Film makers also used the only B-29 still flying in 1983 in the film The Right Stuff to recreate the launch of the Bell X-1 for the first supersonic flight.

The B-29 also played the titular role in the 1980 Disney film The Last Flight of Noah's Ark.

The first Hollywood retelling of the 509th Composite Group's preparation for the atomic missions was Above and Beyond, released by MGM in 1953, with Robert Taylor portraying Col. Paul Tibbetts, and Jim Backus as Gen. Curtis LeMay. Filmed at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

B-36 Peacemaker

The Convair B-36 featured prominently in Paramount's Strategic Air Command (1955) starring James Stewart, a World War II bomber pilot and member of the Air Force Reserve, and written by Valentine Davies and Beirne Lay, Jr.. The film features many good aerial shots of B-36s and was primarily filmed at Carswell AFB, Texas and in the Tampa, Florida area. One shot that was particularly difficult to shoot was where Stewart's character, a baseball player was standing on a baseball field and a B-36 flew overhead, casting a shadow over him and symbolizing his coming recall to active service. In the film this character is forced to crash land his B-36 in the Arctic.

B-47 Stratojet

The Boeing B-47 Stratojet gets a secondary role in Paramount's Strategic Air Command (1955) starring James Stewart as the new jet that is nothing like the old B-36 he is used to. The cockpit section used in filming this is now at the March Field Air Museum.

Ejection seat testing of B-47s performed at Eglin AFB, Florida, in 1953 and 1954 as part of aeromedical research was recreated on film in the 1955 20th Century Fox film On the Threshold of Space starring Guy Madison.

B-52 Stratofortress

Boeing B-52 Stratofortress

The 1957 Karl Malden film Bombers B-52 gives a fictional account of the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress' introduction into service at Castle Air Force Base.

The 1963 film A Gathering of Eagles focuses on the stresses of a B-52 wing commander at the height of the cold war. Some excellent visuals of the B-52 including a complex inflight refueling operation which nearly ends in disaster. The film was written and directed by Sy Bartlett, and contains elements from Twelve O' Clock High, which he co-wrote.

The B-52 was also a key part of Stanley Kubrick's 1964 black comedy film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and in A Gathering of Eagles.

A B-52 was a focal point of the novel Trinity's Child, by William Prochnau, and the television film adaptation By Dawn's Early Light.

B-58 Hustler

Footage of Convair B-58 Hustlers were used as "Vindicator" bombers in the 1964 Cold War film Fail-Safe. Director Stanley Kubrick had filed a law suit alleging infringement on the storyline of his Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb which shared many plot elements with Fail Safe in order to delay the latter film's release until after his production came out.

Beech 18

Hollywood pilot Frank Tallman famously flew a Beechcraft Model 18 through a billboard in the 1963 chase epic It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Bell 47

Bell 47

The 1950s American television series Whirlybirds starred a pair of Bell 47 helicopters. The association with Whirlybirds continues to be used in order to promote helicopters and the Bell 47 in particular. A Bell 47 was also one of the 'stars' of the Australian television series Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.

A Bell 47G3B-1 was used as the "Batcopter" in the 1966 Batman film. This airframe had previously appeared in Lassie Come Home.

A Bell 47 depicted an ersatz German helicopter in the 1968 action classic Where Eagles Dare. Although experimental German helicopter types did exist in this time period, they were operationally used on only a limited basis and did not have performance necessary to ferry military officials as depicted in the film.

The Bell 47, in its military configuration as a H-13 Sioux, was central to the television series M*A*S*H, as well as the 1970 Robert Altman film of the same name. Company clerk, Cpl. "Radar" O'Reilly, gets his nickname from his ability to hear incoming choppers carrying wounded before anyone else.

In Norman Jewison's 1979 film, ...And Justice For All, a crazy judge (Jack Warden) takes a lawyer (Al Pacino) for a ride in a Bell 47G-2 that ends up ditching in Baltimore's Inner Harbor when it runs out of fuel.

Bell 206

Chopper Squad was a 1970s Australian television series about a Bell 206 JetRanger used for rescue work in Sydney. The helicopter used was an actual rescue helicopter operated by the Westpac Life Saver Rescue Helicopter Service.

A Bell 206B was one of the helicopters that attacks the oil rig control center of Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the climactic scenes of the 1971 James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever. The Jet Ranger also appeared in the Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me.

In the film Blue Thunder, a Jet Ranger plays the part of a LAPD Police Helicopter for the Astro division.

Bell 222

A Bell 222A was featured in the television film Airwolf which starred Jan-Michael Vincent and Ernest Borgnine. Within the year, the film was made into a TV series which aired from 1984 to 1986.

In the film Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man a Bell 222UT is used to eliminate the antagonists in a high rise building near downtown Los Angeles.

Bell H-1 Iroquois

Bell UH-1 Iroquois

The Bell UH-1 Iroquois (commonly called the Huey) was a central part of the 2002 film We Were Soldiers. The helicopter was shown ferrying troops into the Ia Drang valley as part of the then-new concept of air cavalry. The film particularly focused on the flights of Major Bruce Crandall, who was later awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions while piloting his UH-1 during the battle depicted in the film. Four of the UH-1s used were provided by the Georgia Army National Guard.

The UH-1 was an important part of the 1968 film The Green Berets. The production company paid $18,623.64 for the material, the eighty-five hours of flying time by UH-1 helicopters, and thirty-eight hundred man-days for military personnel taken away from their regular duties.

Two UH-1H Hueys make up part of the attack package on Ernst Stavro Blofeld's oil rig command center at the climax of the 1971 James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever.

The UH-1 was in Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 epic Apocalypse Now. Several Hueys were rented from the Philippine Air force.

UH-1s were prominently featured in Oliver Stone's 1986 film Platoon.

In the 1986 film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Hikaru Sulu uses a Bell 204 Huey to deliver plexiglas to the Klingon ship in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.

The 1990 film Air America, about the CIA's proprietary airline during the war in Southeast Asia, featured the ubiquitous Huey helicopter.

The slaying of Israeli athletes by Black September terrorists and the destruction of a Bundesgrenzschutz Bell/Dornier UH-1D during the 1972 Summer Olympics was depicted in the 2005 Steven Spielberg film Munich.

Bell X-1

The Bell X-1 was depicted early in the film The Right Stuff. The film showed the historic flight of the X-1 becoming the first aircraft to break the sound barrier. This achievement helped usher in the U.S. space program that was the subject of the rest of the film. Mock-up is now displayed at the Planes of Fame Museum, Chino, California.

Bell X-2

For the pilot-film of the TV-series Quantum Leap a Bell X-2 mock-up was built, which is now on display at the Planes of Fame Museum, Chino, California, together with the X-1 mock-up from the film The Right Stuff.

Boeing 314

The Ken Follett novel Night Over Water is the story of a group of people who are travelling from England to the United States in a Boeing 314 at the beginning of World War II.

Boeing 707

A Boeing 707 leased from Flying Tiger Line portrayed two aircraft in the 1970 film Airport, based on the 1968 Arthur Hailey novel of the same name.

The Boeing 707 serves as the platform for the real-life E-3 Sentry, an airborne warning and control aircraft. In the Tom Clancy novel "Debt of Honor", the E-3s operated by the U.S. were high priority targets for the air forces of Japan.

Boeing 727

The 1996 film Eraser includes an elaborate action sequence involving a parachute jump from a crippled Boeing 727.

The 1998 film U.S. Marshals depicts the crash of a Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System (JPATS) 727.

Boeing 747

Boeing VC-25 Air Force One

The Boeing 747 was featured in the film Executive Decision as the location of a terrorist hijacking.

A 747–146 was the title subject of the film Air Force One, portraying the real 747-200 VC-25 that transports the President of the United States.

The 747 was depicted several times in the best selling Tom Clancy novel Debt of Honor. Most prominently, a Japan Airlines 747 was used in a suicide attack on the U.S. Capitol building, killing the President, most of the cabinet and the congress who were present for a joint session of the United States Congress. This event laid the premise for the novel Executive Orders, another best seller. It was also prominent in the novel and the film The Sum of All Fears as the National Airborne Operations Center during a nuclear showdown with Russia.

A Boeing 747 is the plane flown by passengers on the made for television thriller film, Murder on Flight 502.

In the film Soul Plane, the plane is a heavily modified 747, customized with low-rider hydraulics, spinning rims, and painted purple.

In the 2010 film Inception, the team flew in a 747 from Sydney to the US, and performed the inception task while aboard.

A redressed American Airlines Boeing 747 was featured extensively in the 1974 film Airport 1975.

A 747 in-flight is also the setting for the 2006 horror-thriller film Snakes On A Plane in which a large number of venomous snakes wriggle loose on the large jet, corralled by an FBI agent played by Samuel L. Jackson.

Boeing 757

A Boeing 757 was depicted in the 2006 film United 93 recounting the story of the fourth airliner hijacked in the September 11 attacks, United Airlines Flight 93.

Boeing 767

The Boeing E-767, a 767 configured as an airborne early warning and control aircraft, was central to the plot in the Tom Clancy novel Debt of Honor. During a war between the U.S. and Japan, the E-767s were considered valuable assets to be protected by the operating Japanese and high priority targets for the U.S. military.

Boeing-Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanche

The canceled Boeing-Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanche appeared in director Ang Lee's Hulk film in 2003.

Bücker Bestmann

In the film The Great Escape, the characters played by James Garner and Donald Pleasence steal a Bücker Bü 181 Bestmann from a German airfield in a bid to fly to neutral Switzerland, however the aircraft develops engine problems and crashes.

Bugatti Model 100

In the Salman Rushdie book Shalimar the Clown, the Bugatti Model 100 air racer was depicted as being completed to military model 110 standards and test flown before being hidden in a haybarn from the Germans during the invasion of France in 1940.

C-47 Skytrain / Dakota

See also Douglas DC-3 the civilian aircraft on which the Dakota was based.

A ski-equipped Douglas C-47 Skytrain is featured in Howard Hawks' 1951 science-fiction thriller, The Thing From Another World, based on the 1938 novella "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, Jr..

Eleven Douglas C-47 Skytrains were gathered for airdrop scenes in the film A Bridge Too Far, all of which had to be of a paratroop configuration.

C-54 Skymaster

The 20th Century Fox production The Big Lift (originally titled Quartered City), set during the Berlin Airlift, was filmed in Berlin at a former German studio near Tempelhof in 1949 and Douglas C-54 Skymasters were prominently featured. Military personnel from Rhein-Main Air Base appeared as extras.

C-74 Globemaster

A Douglas C-74 Globemaster appeared in the Michael Caine film The Italian Job.

C-82 Packet

The crash of a Fairchild C-82 Packet in the North African desert is central to the plot of The Flight of the Phoenix drawn from a 1964 novel by Elleston Trevor of the same title.

C-119 Flying Boxcar

Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar

The Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar was the subject of the 2004 remake of Flight of the Phoenix, using the descendant design of the C-82 Packet of the original. Not well received at the box office, the film also incorrectly depicted the C-119 engines using Coffman starter cartridges like the C-82, while the later design used a 5 hp (3.7 kW) auxiliary power unit to start engines.

C-121 Constellation

Lockheed C-121A Constellation, 48-615, was used in the 1976 filming of MacArthur, starring Gregory Peck, painted in Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces (SCAP) markings. The film was released in 1977.

C-123 Provider

The 1990 film Air America loosely recounted the exploits of the Central Intelligence Agency proprietary airline in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and early 1970s and featured Fairchild C-123K Providers leased from the Royal Thai Air Force.

The C-123 was featured in the 1997 film Con Air, with much of the film's action taking place in and around the aircraft.

C-130 Hercules

A Lockheed C-130 Hercules was featured in the 1987 James Bond film The Living Daylights, although a C-123K Provider was swapped out in some tail ramp fight scene close-ups.

The special operations variant, the Lockheed MC-130 Combat Talon was featured as the rescue aircraft in the film Air Force One, performing a daring mid-air rescue of the President and his family as Air Force One is failing and going into the water.

In the 2007 film Transformers a variant of the C-130, the AC-130 Spectre/Spooky, is used to drive off the Decepticons after the military base in Qatar is attacked; by executing a pylon turn to deliver ground fire.

Multiple C-130s were in the 1977 movie Raid on Entebbe.

Capelis XC-12

The oddball Capelis XC-12, an unsuccessful 1933 transport design, appears as a bomber in the 1942 Republic film Flying Tigers.

CASA 2.111

Several ex-Spanish Air Force CASA 2.111s were used as "stand-ins" to depict German Heinkel He 111 bombers in the film Battle of Britain.

Cessna 310

Cessna 310D Songbird III used in later episodes of Sky King

The Cessna 310B, "Songbird", registration N5348A, was featured in many episodes of the popular TV show Sky King during the late 1950s.

CG-4 Haig / Hadrian

Crashed WACO CG-4A gliders of the 99th Troop Carrier Squadron were depicted by replicas in the film Saving Private Ryan. These were recreated using measurements taken from a surviving example at the Museum of Army Flying, Middle Wallop, Hampshire, England.

CH-34 Choctaw / Westland Wessex

Westland Wessex helicopters portrayed CH-34 Choctaws in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket.

Turbine-repowered Sikorsky S-58Ts portrayed CH-34 Choctaws in the 1990 film Air America about the exploits of the Central Intelligence Agency proprietary airline during the war in Southeast Asia.

CH-46 Sea Knight / Boeing-Vertol 107

A Kawasaki-built KV-107 portrays a Boeing Vertol CH-46 Sea Knight that airlifts a team of hijackers aboard the USS Missouri in the 1992 film Under Siege, and is depicted being blown up on the fantail of the battleship later in the film.

In the James Bond film You Only Live Twice a Kawasaki-built KV-107 has a electromagnet slung loaded underneath, and uses it to airlift an antagonists car off the road, thereby freeing up 007 from their pursuit.

Concorde

Concorde

Concorde was a central feature in the disaster film The Concorde ... Airport '79. A French Concorde was leased from the manufacturers for filming. The aircraft used was the aircraft which crashed in 2000.

The Aerialbot Silverbolt of the Transformers turns into Concorde.

In the Doctor Who serial "Time-Flight", Concorde, its passengers and crew are pulled through time to a prehistoric version of Earth.

Consolidated NY

U.S. Navy Consolidated NY trainers from Floyd Bennett Field appeared as some of the biplanes that attack King Kong atop the Empire State Building in the 1933 original film.

Curtiss RC-1

The rare U.S. Marine Corps Curtiss RC-1 air ambulance, A-8864, made an appearance in the 1935 Warner Bros. film "Devil Dogs of the Air" starring James Cagney and Pat O'Brien.

Dassault Mirage 2000

The Dassault Mirage 2000-5 featured prominently in the 2005 French film Les Chevaliers du Ciel (The Knights of the Sky in literal translation, released as Sky Fighters in English-speaking territories).

The Transformers character Needlenose disguises itself as a Dassault Mirage 2000.

de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver

The de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver was central to the film Six Days Seven Nights. The actual flying in the film was done by its star, Harrison Ford, who enjoyed flying the Beaver so much that he bought one after filming was completed. Three flying Beavers and four non-flyable were used in the production, all detailed to exactly match one another.

The 1982 film Mother Lode made use of a Canadian-registered former US Army DHC-2 Beaver on floats as the neglected mount of character Jean Dupré (Nick Mancuso), who embarks on a search for a missing friend in northern British Columbia. During the filming the aircraft actually crashed while landing on a lake and sunk. This accident was not in the original script, but the footage was retained and incorporated into the film's plot. The aircraft was recovered from the lake, repaired, restored and exported to the US.

de Havilland Comet

The de Havilland Comet airliner is featured in the 1952 British film The Sound Barrier.

de Havilland DH.4

The 1927 William Wellman film Wings featured de Havilland DH.4s amongst many types depicting World War I aircraft.

de Havilland Fox Moth

de Havilland Fox Moth

The novel Round the Bend by Nevil Shute is the story of two men, both British Licenced Aircraft Engineers. A large number of different aircraft types, both fictitious and real, feature in the book. The narrator and one of the protagonists of the story is Tom Cutter, and the novel details his efforts to establish an air charter business in Bahrain immediately after World War II. His first aircraft is a de Havilland Fox Moth; it is later joined by several other aircraft as the business expands, mostly fictitious, but among them a Percival Proctor.

de Havilland Hornet Moth

The novel Hornet Flight by Ken Follett is a thriller of the Resistance against the Nazi occupation of Denmark in World War II. In the novel a de Havilland Hornet Moth is used by the protagonists to fly from Denmark to the United Kingdom with information about a German radar system. The author drew inspiration from an actual flight that took place during World War II.

de Havilland Mosquito

In the 1954 British film The Purple Plain with Gregory Peck, a Canadian Second World War pilot crashes a de Havilland Mosquito on the Burma plain and struggles to survive.

De Havilland Mosquitos feature prominently in the 1964 film 633 Squadron alongside actors Cliff Robertson and Harry Andrews. The film was notable for its use of genuine, airworthy aircraft, rather than models, for many of the scenes.

Mosquitos also play the title role of the 1969 film Mosquito Squadron, starring David McCallum and Charles Gray.

The Mosquito plays an important role with the de Havilland Vampire in Frederick Forsyth's novella The Shepherd.

Mosquitos are featured prominently in the Tintin comic book album The Red Sea Sharks. They drive the plot in various ways, first as war-surplus equipment offered for sale by an arms dealer early in the story, and later in combat.

Scott Summers and his younger brother Alex Summers, members of Marvel Comics's X-Men, are orphaned as children after parachuting out of their father's Mosquito when it is set ablaze by an alien attack.

de Havilland Vampire

The de Havilland Vampire was central to the plot of the novella, The Shepherd by British novelist Frederick Forsyth, the story of an RAF pilot attempting to fly home for Christmas from RAF Celle, Germany to RAF Lakenheath on Christmas Eve 1957. The fact that the DH.100 was not fitted with ejection seats until about 10 years later, and hence was a major challenge to bail out of, is an important element of the story.

Vampire jets also feature in the 1966 novel Shooting Script by former RAF pilot and thriller writer Gavin Lyall.

A French Air Force Vampire appears in the 1954 French-language comic La grande menace by Jacques Martin, the first featuring investigative journalist Guy Lefranc; it was destroyed while engaging an unidentified helicopter.

Douglas DC-3

See also C-47 Skytrain / Dakota the military version of the DC-3

The chief character of the book High Citadel by Desmond Bagley is an alcoholic former Korean War fighter pilot who flies a Douglas DC-3 for a small airline in a fictional Andean country in South America. He is forced at gunpoint by his co-pilot—a Communist agent—to crash-land the DC-3 at a remote abandoned mine in the Andes so that Communists planning a coup can capture and kill a politician travelling as a passenger.

A DC-3A of Central Airlines appears in the 1954 film Strategic Air Command as the transport that conveys a security check team into Carswell AFB, Texas.

An episode of The Twilight Zone entitled "The Arrival" features a Douglas DC-3 known as Flight 107, which arrives at its destination with no one onboard. It originally aired 22 September 1961.

In the 1989 comedy film Major League, the hard-luck Cleveland Indians baseball team is "upgraded" to a DC-3 for their transportation to away games.

The 2012 CBC television series Arctic Air features a Yellowknife-based airline that relies on DC-3s.

Douglas DC-4

Douglas C-54 Skymaster

A former USAF Douglas C-54 Skymaster operated by Transocean Airlines portrayed the Douglas DC-4 in the 1954 film The High and the Mighty based on the Ernest K. Gann novel of the same name. Ironically, this airframe was lost over the Pacific on 28 March 1964 with an engine fire just as depicted in the film. There were no survivors of the nine "souls on board" and the wreckage was never found.

Douglas DC-7

The final scenes in the 1973 George Lucas film American Graffiti feature a Douglas DC-7C airliner of Magic Carpet Airlines which had previously been leased from owner Club America Incorporated by the rock band Grand Funk Railroad from March 1971 to June 1971.

EB-66 Destroyer

The film Bat*21 featured an EB-66 variant of the Douglas B-66 Destroyer being shot down over North Vietnam in the beginning of the film. The rest film depicted the real life events surrounding the rescue of LTC Iceal Hambleton, who was the only survivor of the 6 man crew.

Eurocopter Tiger

A Eurocopter EC 665 Tiger attack helicopter had a starring role in the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye. On the 2002 Special Edition DVD, the director's commentary notes the aircraft's appearances in the film's Monte Carlo scenes were of a prototype Tiger provided by the French Navy along with its test platform, the FS La Fayette. Its other appearances throughout the rest of the film were special effects models.

F2H Banshee

Protagonist Lt. Harry Brubaker flew a McDonnell F2H Banshee in the 1953 James A. Michener novel The Bridges at Toko-Ri. In the subsequent 1954 film adaptation, his aircraft was changed to a Grumman F9F Panther.

F3F

Flight Command, released by MGM in 1940, featured the Grumman F3F, filmed at NAS North Island, San Diego, California. Aerial flying by Frank Clarke and Paul Mantz.

The 1941 Warner Bros. film Dive Bomber showed Grumman F3Fs.

F-4 Phantom II

The Gobots character Mach 3 and the Transformers character Fireflight both turn into McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom IIs.

Marine aviator Lt. Col. Wilbur "Bull" Meecham flew an F-4 Phantom II in the 1976 Pat Conroy novel The Great Santini and the subsequent 1979 film adaptation starring Robert Duvall.

In book "World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War" by Max Brooks, an Iranian Air Force Major recalls using an F-4 Phantom II to destroy a bridge in Pakistan, leading to a full nuclear exchange between Iran and Pakistan.

The F-4D Phantom II operated by the Collings Foundation appeared in the 2011 Green Lantern film.

F4F Wildcat

Grumman F4F Wildcats were shown in the critical aerial battle scenes in the film Midway.

F4U Corsair

The Chance Vought F4U Corsair was a regularly featured aircraft of VMF-214 in the television series Baa Baa Black Sheep (later renamed Black Sheep Squadron).

F-5 Freedom Fighter

The Northrop F-5 Freedom Fighter played the part of the fictional MiG-28 enemy aircraft in Top Gun.

F9F Panther

Grumman F9F Panthers

The Grumman F9F-2 Panther was prominently featured in the 1954 films Men of the Fighting Lady and The Bridges at Toko-Ri, although the protagonist instead flew a McDonnell F2H Banshee in the 1953 novel of the same name upon which the latter film was based. Footage of the famous non-fatal F9F-5 Panther ramp strike accident that occurred 23 June 1951 as Cdr. George Chamberlain Duncan attempted a landing aboard USS Midway in BuNo 125228, during carrier suitability tests in the Atlantic Ocean in which the forward fuselage broke away and rolled down the deck, pilot suffering burns, has been used in several films including Men of the Fighting Lady, Midway, and The Hunt For Red October.

F11F Tiger

A heat-seeking missile launched by a Grumman F11F Tiger that accidentally strikes the port area of Latakia, Syria, setting off secondary explosions, gives the Soviet Union the casus belli for preemptive nuclear strikes against the United States in "Alas, Babylon", the post-apocalyptic 1959 novel by Pat Frank.

F-14 Tomcat

The Grumman F-14 Tomcat was central to the film Top Gun. The aviation-themed film was such a success in creating interest in naval aviation that the U.S. Navy, which assisted with the film, set up recruitment desks outside some theaters. Producers paid the U.S. Navy $886,000 as reimbursement for flight time of aircraft in the film. An hour of flight time for the F-14 was billed at $7,600.

Two F-14As of VF-84 from the USS Nimitz appeared in the 1980 film The Final Countdown, with four from the squadron in the 1996 release Executive Decision, the Jolly Rogers' final film appearance before being disestablished. The television series JAG, which debuted in 1995 featured a Tomcat pilot-turned-lawyer, and the Tomcat was a central part of the Stephen Coonts novel "Final Flight".

F-15 Eagle

The McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle is one of the most recognized modern fighters; this has led to, or perhaps even been aided by, its common use in children's toys. The Transformers toy line and media has featured numerous characters who turn into F-15 Eagles, the most notable being the villain Starscream in 1984 and a group of similar Decepticons, the Seekers Acid Storm, Thundercracker, Skywarp and Sunstorm. Although completely unrelated design to the others, the Autobot Air Raid also disguises himself as an F-15.

The F-15 is featured in the film Air Force One. The Eagle was also shown in advertisements for the film Thirteen Days. The ads were withdrawn when it came to the attention of New Line Cinema that the F-15, which first flew in 1972, was out of place for a movie set in 1962. This was problematic for New Line, who had termed the film a "by-the-numbers recreation" and "close to perfect." "Every ship, plane, truck and craft that moves in the film is absolutely authentic to the time period," said Steve Elzer, a spokesman for New Line. Mr. Elzer said the advertisement was created by an outside agency.

Air battles between F-15s were depicted in the novel "Debt of Honor". The battles were not only significant to the plot, but unusual in that both sides were operating the same aircraft against each other.

Leader-1 of the Gobots turns into an F-15.

F-16 Fighting Falcon

F-16s of the USAF's Thunderbirds display team

The General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon was featured in the film The Sum of All Fears. The Falcon was also one of the stars of the film Iron Eagle. The U.S. Air Force refused to assist with production of the film because it found the plot about a teenager flying an F-16 into a foreign country to be "a little off the wall".

The F-16 is also the principal aircraft flown by the player character's squadron in the 1993 Origin Systems computer game Strike Commander.

The aircraft was also featured in the HBO 1992 production Afterburn. A dramatization of true events, the F-16 was the subject of a protracted legal battle over the safety of the design.

The Transformers Aerialbot Skydive and Decepticon Dreadwind disguise themselves as F-16s. In Transformers: Prime, Starscream disguises himself as an F-16.

F/A-18 Hornet

F-18s feature prominently in Independence Day, used both against the city destroyer over the remains of Los Angeles after the initial attack and over Area 51 in the final battle scene.

The McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet appeared briefly in the film Tears of the Sun in the final, climactic battle, helping to save the surviving SEAL team members.

The F/A-18 Hornet appears in the film Clear and Present Danger, where it drops a laser guided bomb on a car at a drug lord's villa, being laser designated by a special forces team.

The F/A-18F Super Hornet, a two-seat variant, was featured in the film Behind Enemy Lines. The movie centers around a Super Hornet being shot down over Bosnia.

F/A-18s attack the famous Japanese monster Godzilla (ゴジラ |Gojira) in the 1998 remake Godzilla.

F/A-18s in the film The Rock attack the prison on Alcatraz Island in the final scenes.

F-22 Raptor

The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor has been featured in numerous books, such as Tom Clancy's Debt of Honor in which a lengthy mission by F-22s dominates the last part of the book; and Clive Cussler's Dark Watch. In Cussler's book, an F-22 embarks on a secret mission to take out a Syrian foe. In Debt of Honor, the F-22 (named the Rapier) represented the newest in stealth technology being used by the United States against Japan's advanced Boeing E-767 AWACS aircraft.

The Raptor has appeared in films as well. Despite appearing in the 2003 Hulk film, the F-22 made its major Hollywood debut in the 2007 film Transformers and its sequel as the form taken by the Decepticon character Starscream in addition to numerous USAF fighters that engaged during the initial and climactic battles. The film crew was allowed to film actual Raptors in flight, unlike previous computer-generated appearances, because of the military's support of director Michael Bay. The Raptors were filmed at Edwards Air Force Base. The real Raptor made its next big screen appearance in Iron Man, in which a Raptor dubbed "Whiplash 1" lost its left wing during a crash with the Iron Man armor.

Toys released for Starscream were replica F-22 Raptor models. These models were reused for other characters in the line, like Thundercracker, Skywarp and Ramjet, that also turned into F-22 Raptors.

Although the live-action 2007 Transformers film made Starscream the most well known Transformer that turns into an F-22, there were other F-22 Transformers before it. For instance the 1997 Machine Wars versions of Megatron and Megaplex transformed into F-22s.

F-35 Lightning II

Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II

The first major film appearance of a representation of a Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II was in Live Free or Die Hard (released as Die Hard 4 outside North America) in 2007. The film used a combination of a full-scale model and CGI to significantly dramatize its hovering ability using the lift fan.

The Transformers character of the Autobot Breakaway and its redeco the Decepticon Thrust from the Revenge of the Fallen toy both disguise themselves as F-35s. Breakaway appears as a playable character in the 2009 Revenge of the Fallen video game.

In 2012's The Avengers, an F-35 attacks and is subsequently destroyed by the Incredible Hulk. The film was originally intended to include real F-35s, but the Defense Dept. objected to the depiction of F-22s and F-35s as under the control of S.H.I.E.L.D., a covert, "extra-governmental" organization whose loyalties are unclear, so CGI aircraft were substituted instead.

Tom Cruise will reprise his character "Maverick" as an F-35 test pilot in the Top Gun sequel, expected to start filming in April 2012.

F-86 Sabre

USAF fighter pilot love story, the 1958 film The Hunters, set in Korea, features North American F-86 Sabres.

Desmond Bagley's book High Citadel features F-86 Sabres, which make up the frontline equipment of the air force of the fictional South American country in which the book is set. There are four squadrons of Sabres; two are loyal to the current corrupt government; one is secretly loyal to a reformist politician who is returning from exile to take over the country; and the fourth is secretly loyal to Communist forces who are attempting to kill the politician. The latter part of the novel features a dogfight between a Sabre flown by one of the main characters—a CIA agent and former Sabre pilot who fought in the Korean War—and aircraft of the Communist squadron.

F-101 Voodoo

A pair of McDonnell F-101B Voodoos fly over the Russian submarine Спрут at the end of the 1966 comedy The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming. Although the film is set in New England, it was filmed on the West Coast and the fighters were from the 84th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron, based at Hamilton AFB, California.

F-104 Starfighter

Gen. Charles "Chuck" Yeager's 10 December 1963 flying accident during a test flight in a modified rocket-boosted Lockheed NF-104 Starfighter was featured in The Right Stuff motion picture; although the aircraft used for filming was a standard Luftwaffe F-104G of 2. Deutsche Luftwaffen-Ausbildungsstaffel F-104 USA, Luke AFB, Arizona, flying with its wingtip fuel tanks removed, but otherwise lacking any of the NF-104A's modifications, most visibly the rocket engine pod at the base of the vertical stabilizer.

F-105 Thunderchief

In the third season episode "War Crimes" of the television series The West Wing, White House Chief of Staff Leo McGarry's Vietnam War mission over Southeast Asia as a Republic F-105 Thunderchief pilot of the 355th Tactical Fighter Wing, in which he is shot down and evades capture, is depicted.

Fairey Swordfish

Two Fairey Swordfish had starring roles in the 1960 film Sink the Bismarck!, filmed in 1959. Swordfish LS326 was marked as "5A" of 825 Naval Air Squadron, while NF389 was marked as LS423 / "5B".

Focke-Wulf Fw 190

Modified North American T-6 Texans portrayed Focke Wulf Fw 190s in A Bridge Too Far.

A new-build Fw 190 A-8/N participated in the Finnish war film Tali-Ihantala 1944, painted in the same markings as Oberst Erich Rudorffer's aircraft in 1944. The film was released in December 2007.

Focke-Wulf Triebflügel

A Focke Wulf Fw Triebflügel aircraft was featured in the 2011 American superhero film Captain America: The First Avenger, with the supervillain Red Skull making his first escape in this rocket-aircraft. The scene accurately depicts the rocket and ramjet start and initial climb out of the Triebflügel. Historically, the Triebflügel had only reached wind-tunnel testing when the Allied forces reached the production facilities, and no complete prototype was ever built. CGI vehicles designed for the film were based on real historical aircraft such as the Triebflügel.

Fokker D.VII

The 1927 William Wellman film Wings featured a Fokker D.VII amongst many types depicting World War I aircraft.

A Fokker D.VII is flown in a dogfight by Baron Heinrich von Frohleich versus Race Bannon in a SPAD S.XIII in episode 10 of Jonny Quest, "Shadow of the Condor".

Ford Trimotor

A Ford 4-AT-E Trimotor, N8407, appeared in the 1965 comedy The Family Jewels "flown" by Jerry Lewis. This aircraft is now owned by the Experimental Aircraft Association.

The Ford 5-AT-B Trimotor currently owned by Kermit Weeks' Fantasy of Flight Museum was featured early in the opening of the 1984 film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Gee Bee Racer

A Gee Bee Model Z Super Sportster racing plane was featured in the 1991 Walt Disney Productions film The Rocketeer.

Kermit Weeks, founder of Fantasy of Flight, used a Gee Bee Model Z as his main character "Zee" in a series of children's books set around the Golden Age of Aviation.

Gloster Meteor

A privately-owned ex-RAF Gloster NF Mk. 11 Meteor, WD592, then Royal Navy TT20, registered N94749, appeared in the two-part 1976 episode, The Feminine Mystique", of the first season of the Wonder Woman television series, as the experimental "XPJ-1" fighter which is stolen by the Nazis. This airframe has been donated to the Edwards AFB Flight Test Center museum.

Goodyear Blimp

Goodyear Blimp

The 1977 John Frankenheimer film Black Sunday features the Goodyear Blimp as the vehicle which Black September terrorists plan to hijack and attack the Super Bowl, played in the Orange Bowl in Miami.

Grumman G-21 Goose

A Grumman G-21 Goose, painted red and white and named "Cutter's Goose", was the main transport of protagonist Jake Cutter in the early 1982–83 adventure television series, Tales of the Gold Monkey, and used to transport Cutter and his allies amongst various south Pacific islands in the late 1930s setting of the show.

Grumman Widgeon

A Grumman G-44 Widgeon opened each week's episode of the television series Fantasy Island.

Grumman X-29

The Transformers Autobot named Dogfight disguises himself as an Grumman X-29.

Harrier family

The Harrier family's unique VTOL characteristics have led to them being featured in a number of films and flight simulator programs. Two AV-8B Harrier IIs were used in the film True Lies. The aircraft was prominent in the latter part of the film, being used by Arnold Schwarzenegger's character to rescue his daughter from terrorists in a Miami high rise and shoot down their helicopter.

The Gobots character Royal-T and the Transformers Autobot named Slingshot disguise themselves as a Harrier. In the Revenge of the Fallen Decepticon character Dirge also became a Harrier. This design was later used for the Decepticon Jetblade.

Handley Page Victor

The 1963 British film The Iron Maiden features a Handley Page Victor bomber as a fictional supersonic passenger-carrying airliner designed by the protagonist. At the end of the film, this fictional airliner is named after the eponymous traction engine.

Hawker Hunter

The 1952 British film The Sound Barrier features Hawker Hunter fighters.

A formation of Hawker Hunters of the Chilean Air Force appeared in the 2004 Chilean film Machuca in which they bomb the Palacio de La Moneda.

Hawker Hurricane

The Hawker Hurricane was featured in the film Battle of Britain. Three airworthy Hurricanes were located and used for the filming.

Hiller UH-12 / OH-23 Raven

A Hiller UH-12C was used to attack James Bond in the 1963 film From Russia With Love.

A Hiller UH-12E suffered a tail-rotor strike during filming of the 1978 film Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Footage of the crash was used in the film. The helicopter pilot and actors on-board escaped without serious injury, but the helicopter was destroyed.

Hindenburg

The Zeppelin LZ 129 Hindenburg was the subject of the 1975 film The Hindenburg, which speculated sabotage as the cause of the 1937 disaster at Naval Air Station Lakehurst, New Jersey. The studio model of the airship is now displayed in the Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

In the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana Jones travels on a Zeppelin and escapes in an aircraft mounted by trapeze to Zeppelin's underside.

Hispano HA-1112

Hispano Aviación Ha 1112 Buchón

Twenty-eight former Spanish Air Force Hispano Aviación HA-1112s were used in the film Battle of Britain as "stand-ins" to depict Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters of the Luftwaffe. Eighteen were flown, six could taxi, the rest used to dress sets. In the mid-1960s at the time aircraft began to be collected for the film to be made, the only genuine Bf 109s known to exist were non-flyable examples in museums such as the Imperial War Museum and the South African National Museum of Military History or in private hands, whereas the HA-1112 was just being retired from service with the Spanish Air Force and flyable examples were plentiful. The four airframes acquired by the Confederate Air Force just prior to the start of filming "were the first Buchóns in truly civilian ownership, early members of the fledgling warbird preservation movement."

Three of the Buchóns were "hastily converted into P-51B Mustangs for the film Patton: Lust For Glory. This involved the attachment of a large Mustang-esque fibreglass air intake to the underside of the fuselage."

Several Buchóns were painted in RAF markings for the 1969 Italian "macaroni combat" war film Eagles Over London, also known as Battle Squadron and Battle Command (Italian: La battaglia d'Inghilterra), directed by Enzo G. Castellari. "In 1979, much of the footage shot for 'Eagles Over London' appeared in the dire George Peppard film 'Hell to Victory'."

One CAF Buchón flew as a Bf 109B in Condor Legion markings for the film Hindenburg which began filming in August 1974.

One Buchón, which had taxied in The Battle of Britain, flew in the 1988 LWT series Piece of Cake,, and was one of three flyable HA-1112s used to depict Bf 109s in the 1990 film Memphis Belle. The Piece of Cake Buchón also appeared in the 1991 ITV television miniseries A Perfect Hero.

A Buchón now with the Planes of Fame Air Museum, Chino, California, is under repair after a landing accident at Lydd in Kent during filming of Pearl Harbor in 2000.

A former training airframe that did not appear in the Battle of Britain but which was restored to Bf 109G-10 standard in the early 1990s, and operated by the Old Flying Machine Company, appeared in the 1995 television film Over Here starring Martin Clunes.

Horten Ho 229

The HYDRA flying-wing bomber featured in the 2011 American superhero film Captain America: The First Avenger was based in part on the Horten Ho 229 design. Historically, Horten Ho 229 and its variants never progressed beyond test-flight prototypes. CGI vehicles designed for the film were based on real historical aircraft such as the Horten Ho 229.

HU-16 Albatross

The 1964 film Flight from Ashiya, starring Richard Widmark, Yul Brynner and George Chakiris, follows the crews of two Grumman HU-16 Albatross of the USAF Air Rescue Service as they attempt to rescue the survivors of a Japanese shipwreck in the North China Sea.

The 2010 film The Expendables also features an Albatross as the protagonists' private airplane.

Hughes H-4 Hercules

The production and sole test flight of the gargantuan Hughes H-4 Hercules, known as the "Spruce Goose", was depicted in the 2004 Martin Scorsese film The Aviator. A flying large-scale model was used for the film, and it is now displayed next to the original aircraft at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon.

The aircraft was also central to the plot of the Hanna-Barbera animated film Yogi Bear and the Magical Flight of the Spruce Goose.

Hughes XF-11

The 7 July 1946 maiden flight of the Hughes XF-11 reconnaissance design which ended in a crash in Beverly Hills, California, severely injuring pilot Howard Hughes was depicted in a 1977 made-for-television film, The Amazing Howard Hughes (with a P-38 Lightning standing in for the XF-11), and again in the 2004 Martin Scorsese film, The Aviator, with the aircraft depicted by a mock-up with flight rendered through CGI.

ICON A5

The ICON A5 is the starter aircraft for Microsoft Flight.

Ikarus Kurir

The 1973 film The Fifth Offensive, starring Richard Burton, featured an Ikarus Kurir L playing the part of a Luftwaffe Fieseler Storch.

J2F Duck

A Grumman J2F Duck was the primary plot device of the 1971 United Artists film Murphy's War, starring Peter O'Toole as the title character. Stunt flying done by Frank Tallman.

Junkers Ju 52/3m

A Swiss Air Force Junkers Ju 52/3m was used in the 1968 action thriller Where Eagles Dare.

Kaman SH-2 Seasprite

The Transformers Combaticon named Vortex disguises itself as an SH-2G Super Seasprite.

L-5 Sentinel

A Stinson L-5A Sentinel was featured in the film Catch-22 as the aircraft that a pilot commits suicide in after accidentally killing another squadron member with his propeller.

Lamson Alcor

The one-of-a-kind Lamson L-106 Alcor pressurized high altitude research sailplane played a key role in the book Sierra Sierra, by John Joss. In the novel, Marine fighter pilot Mark Lewis saw his best friend, John O'Halloran, killed on the last day of the Vietnam War. When he travels to Seattle, Washington to explain O'Halloran's death to his family he discovers that O'Halloran's father and sister are engaged in building a research glider, the Alcor, which O'Halloran was to have set world records for altitude and distance in, when he returned from Vietnam. Instead Lewis takes O'Halloran's place in the project, while trying to put his own life back together after the war, flying the Alcor in the mountain wave of the Sierra Nevada.

Lockheed Constellation

Lockheed Constellations of Trans World Airlines were depicted in the 2004 Martin Scorsese film The Aviator. The preserved Super Constellation, "Star of America", N6937C, of the Airline History Museum was filmed at San Bernardino International Airport, California, for this Howard Hughes biopic. A fleet of grounded Connies were rendered in CGI.

Lockheed EP-3

The Hainan Island incident was referenced in the television series JAG, in the episode Dog Robber during season 7. In this episode based on the real incident, a US Navy EP-3 collided in mid-air with a Chinese MiG. The EP-3 crew then made an emergency landing at the Fuzhou Airbase in China. The crew and plane were detained as in the real incident. A US delegation led by Admiral Thomas Boone flew to the Fuzhou Airbase and secured the release of the crew, but the aircraft remained in Chinese custody. Against orders a Navy Lieutenant flew into Chinese airspace and destroyed the EP-3 before the Chinese had a chance to study it in detail. This led to him being court-martialed.

Lockheed Model 12 Electra Junior

A Lockheed Model 12 Electra Junior appeared as the French airliner in the climactic final scene from the 1942 film Casablanca. (The aircraft carries the Air France seahorse logo, although Air France did not actually operate the type.) A "cut-out" stood in for a real airplane in many shots.

Lockheed Jetstar

Auric Goldfinger's private aircraft in the 1964 James Bond film Goldfinger is a Lockheed L-1329 Jetstar. Although the real aircraft had "Auric Enterprises" on the nose, the model used in some shots did not.

Lockheed U-2

Lockheed U-2

The Lockheed U-2 made an important appearance in the film Thirteen Days as the aircraft that initially detected Soviet missiles being deployed in Cuba in October 1962, and was later shot down, killing pilot Maj. Rudolf Anderson, Jr. (played by Chip Esten), the only combat casualty of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In 1976, Francis Gary Powers' autobiography was turned into a television film, Francis Gary Powers: The True Story of the U-2 Spy Incident, with Lee Majors in the role of Powers.

Martin MB-2

The 1927 William Wellman film Wings featured Martin MB-2s amongst many types depicting World War I aircraft.

Messerschmitt Bf 109

Two Messerschmitt Bf 108 Taifuns depicted Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters in the 1962 film The Longest Day, and the type substituted for unavailable Luftwaffe fighters again in the 1964 film 633 Squadron.

Messerschmitt Me 262

The American hard rock band Blue Öyster Cult portrayed a Messerschmitt Me 262A on the cover of their third album Secret Treaties (1974). The album also contains a song, "Me 262", written from the point of view of a Luftwaffe pilot on a bomber interception mission in April 1945.

MiGs (generic)

As was common in the 1950s, MiGs (presumably −15s, as the story is set in Korea) are portrayed by Republic F-84F Thunderstreaks in the 1958 film The Hunters, about USAF fighter pilots.

More recently the part of MiGs has been played by the F-5 Tiger II in Top Gun and JAG episode 3.24.

Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21

The Indian (Hindi) film, Rang De Basanti (2006), depicted the MiG-21.

Mikoyan MiG-29

The Mikoyan MiG-29 is the alternate form of the figure Dreadwing as well as its redecos Overcast and Fearswoop from the 2007 and 2009 Transformers film toy lines.

Mil Mi-24

In the film Air Force One a Mil Mi-24 Hind helicopter is sent to retrieve one of the antagonists, from a Russian prison.

A Mi-24 helicopter was also used in the film Blood Diamond, to attack a revolutionaries jungle base in Sierra Leone.

Mi-24s, played by modified SA 330 Pumas are used in films Red Dawn, Rambo: First Blood Part II, and Rambo III.

N3N Canary

Naval Aircraft Factory N3N Canarys were shown in the 1941 Warner Bros. film Dive Bomber.

Nakajima Ki-27

Nakajima Ki-27s, lifted from Japanese film, appeared in the 1942 Republic film Flying Tigers.

Nieuport 17

The Nieuport 17 was one of the main aircraft featured in the film Flyboys.

Nieuport 28

An authentic Nieuport 28 was provided and flown by Frank Tallman, a Hollywood film pilot, for the The Twilight Zone episode "The Last Flight" in which a World War I Royal Flying Corps pilot is transported in time in a cloud to the 1960s. Norton AFB, California, was the filming site. The episode first aired on 5 February 1960.

Noorduyn AT-16

Canadian-built variants of the North American T-6 Texan are seen in the 1943 RKO film Bombardier, filmed at Kirtland Field, New Mexico.

Noorduyn Norseman

The Noorduyn Norseman is featured in scenes in the 1942 Warner Bros. film Captains of the Clouds, with Jimmy Cagney as a Canadian bush pilot at the start of World War II.

North American AT-6 Texan

The 1941 Paramount Pictures film I Wanted Wings featured flights of upwards of 50 North American T-6 Texans from Kelly Field, Texas. Paul Mantz flew camera ships.

North American BT-9 / BT-16

North American BT-9 and BT-16 basic trainers were filmed at Randolph Field, Texas, for the 1941 Paramount Pictures film I Wanted Wings, based on the novel of the same title by 1st Lt. Beirne Lay, Jr.. Paul Mantz flew camera ships.

North American X-15

North American X-15

On 5 November 1959, a small engine fire forced pilot Scott Crossfield to make an emergency landing on Rosamond Dry Lake, Edwards AFB, California, in X-15, 56-6671. Not designed to land with fuel on board, test craft came down with a heavy load of propellants and broke its back, grounding this particular X-15 for three months. Footage of this accident was later incorporated in The Outer Limits episode "The Premonition", first aired 9 January 1965.

Northrop A-17

The Northrop A-17 makes an appearance at March Field at the conclusion of the 1941 Paramount Pictures film I Wanted Wings.

Northrop YB-49

Paramount Studios' 1953 film, The War of the Worlds incorporates color footage of a YB-49 test flight, originally used in one Paramount's Popular Science theatrical shorts; in the George Pal film the Flying Wing is used to drop an atomic bomb on the invading Martians.

O-1 Bird Dog

The 1990 film Air America, which loosely recounted the exploits of the Central Intelligence Agency proprietary airline in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and early 1970s, featured Cessna O-1 Bird Dogs.

O-2 Skymaster

An unmodified Cessna 337 Skymaster painted gray played the part of a Cessna O-2 Skymaster in the motion picture Bat*21, as the plane flown by Danny Glover.

O2C Helldiver

U.S. Navy Curtiss O2C-2 Helldivers from Floyd Bennett Field were used in filming King Kong in 1933, but as Carl Denham observed, "Oh no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast." Writer and director Merian C. Cooper portrayed the pilot who kills Kong, in an uncredited role.

OH-6 Cayuse / Hughes 500

Three Hughes OH-6A Cayuse helicopters make up part of the strike package against Ernst Stavro Blofeld's oil rig command center in the 1971 James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever.

A Hughes 500 takes part in the film Birds Of Prey, where a traffic reporter, played by David Janssen, gets into an aerial duel with a gang of bank robbers, who have their own get away helicopter, an Alouette II

A pair of Hughes 500 helicopters appear in the film Capricorn One, near the climatic ending where they get entangled with a crop duster biplane.

MH-6 Little Bird helicopters show up in the film Black Hawk Down as air support for the downed Blackhawk crew.

In the television series Magnum, P.I. Thomas Magnum's friend and also war veteran Theodore Calvin (also T.C.) flies a civilian Hughes 500D as a tourist charter Island Hoppers business.

P-1 Hawk

The 1927 William Wellman film Wings featured Curtiss P-1 Hawks amongst many types depicting World War I aircraft.

P-35

A civilianized Seversky P-35, the Seversky S2, which won the 1937 Bendix Trophy race, appeared as the "Drake Bullet" in the 1938 M-G-M film Test Pilot.

P-38 Lightning

Von Ryan's Express (1965) begins with main protagonist, USAAF Colonel Joseph Ryan (Frank Sinatra) crash landing a Lockheed P-38 Lightning in World War II Italy, where he was held as a prisoner of war.

A Guy Named Joe (1943) has Spencer Tracy returning as a guiding spirit looking after young P-38 pilot Van Johnson.

The 1944 short feature P-38 Reconnaissance Pilot, starring William Holden as Lt. "Packy" Cummings, dramatises the work of photo reconnaissance pilots in World War II.

P-40

Curtiss P-40 Warhawks

In the John Wayne film: Flying Tigers, (1942) real Curtiss P-40 Warhawks are featured. A New York Times critic called the P-40 "the true stars" of the film. Republic Studios also built replicas for the film due to material shortages during the war. These can be identified by the fairings hiding the cylinder heads of the automotive V-8 engines installed in them.

Future U.S. President Ronald Reagan appears in the Recognition of the Japanese Zero Fighter (training film, 1942) as a young pilot learning to recognize the difference between a P-40 and a Japanese Zero. In this film Reagan mistakes a friend's P-40 for a Japanese Zero and tries to shoot it down. In the end, Reagan gets a chance to shoot down a real Zero.

In the film God is My Co-Pilot (1945), based on Robert Lee Scott, Jr's book about the Flying Tigers and the USAAF pilots who replaced them in the Republic of China and Burma, a mix of real P-40 and "film" P-40s are featured.

In Tora! Tora! Tora!, P-40s are depicted at the attack on Pearl Harbor, both being shot up on the ground and shooting down Zeros.

In Steven Spielberg's film 1941, a P-40 Tomahawk was used as actor John Belushi's fighter, with scenes at the "Barstow Munitions Depot" filmed at Indian Dunes, California.

P-47 Thunderbolt

The film Fighter Squadron (1948) depicts a Republic P-47 Thunderbolt unit.

Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů paid a tribute to the aircraft with his scherzo for orchestra. It was premiered 19 December 1945 in Washington, D.C.

Steve Earle's song "Johnny Come Lately" is about an American P-47 pilot in World War II; it contains a verse "My P-47 is a pretty good ship. She took a round comin' cross the channel last trip."

Modified T-6 Texans depicted P-47s in the film A Bridge Too Far.

P-51 Mustang

The North American P-51 Mustang was featured in the film The Tuskegee Airmen.

Two P-51Ds appear briefly at the end of Saving Private Ryan as "tank-busters" (although P-47 Thunderbolts would have been the more likely type in this role). "Big Beautiful Doll" of the Old Flying Machine Company, Cambridge, England, and "Old Crow" of the Scandinavian Historic Flight were used.

P-51s feature repeatedly in the film Empire of the Sun, dubbed the "cadillac of the skies" by the protagonist, as a symbol of America in the Chinese theatre of World War II.

P-51 Mustangs (post war designation F-51D) appear in the 1957 film Battle Hymn.

The P-51 Mustang is also featured in the movie 2012 film Red Tails.

Panavia Tornado

The Royal Air Force's ground attack aircraft, the Panavia Tornado, featured extensively in the television pilot Strike Force, produced in the 1990s for ITV in the UK. Strike Force did not enter series production.

The Transformers character Darkwing disguises himself as a Panavia Tornado.

PBY Catalina

A former Royal Danish Air Force Consolidated PBY-6A Catalina, BuNo 63998, civil registered N16KL, later owned by the Confederate Air Force' Lone Star Wing, appeared in the 1976 film Midway. This airframe was subsequently written off in a fatal crash on 13 October 1984.

PBY-5A Catalina, BuNo 34027, registered N9505C, appeared in the opening sequence of the 1989 Steven Spielberg film Always as a firebomber picking up a water load and bearing down on two startled fisherman.

In the 2002 submarine film Below, the USS Tiger Shark is directed to pick up three survivors of a torpedoed hospital ship by a Consolidated PBY-5A Catalina, marked as AH545, 'WQ-Z' of 209 Squadron. PBY-5A N9521C was marked as the Catalina that had a decisive role in the sinking of the Bismarck.

A Catalina also appeared in Clive Cussler's 1973 novel, The Mediterranean Caper.

The 1973 film Steelyard Blues starring Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda centres on at attempt to make a Catalina airworthy.

PB4Y Privateer

U.S. Navy PB4Y-2M Privateers of VP-23, based at Naval Air Station Miami, Florida, were filmed at the close of the 1948 hurricane season and the footage used in the 1949 20th Century-Fox film "Slattery's Hurricane".

Percival Proctor

Percival Proctor

The most prominent of the real aircraft in Nevil Shute's Round the Bend is a war-surplus Percival Proctor, which is used by the protagonist Constantine Shak Lin (also known as Connie Shaklin) to tour Asia to spread his teachings. At the end of the book the Proctor is the basis of a shrine to Shaklin and his new creed, laid up in a hangar in a state of uncompleted maintenance for pilgrims to view.

In 1951 Captain W.E. Johns had Biggles and his team fly 2 Percival Proctors in the story "Another Job For Biggles".

In 1968, three Proctors were remodelled with inverted gull wings and other cosmetic alterations to represent Junkers Ju 87s in the film Battle of Britain.

Pfalz D.XII

A Pfalz D.XII which is now in the National Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C., was flown in The Dawn Patrol (1930), Hell's Angels (1930), and Men with Wings (1938).

Pilatus Porter

The STOL-capable Pilatus Porter was depicted in the 1990 film Air America, loosely recounting the exploits of the Central Intelligence Agency proprietary airline in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Piper Cherokee

The character Pussy Galore in the James Bond film Goldfinger is the leader of "Pussy Galore's Flying Circus", a group of women who fly Piper Cherokees. In the film the arch-villain uses the Cherokees in his plan to deprive the United States government of the gold in Fort Knox.

Pitcairn Autogyro

In the 1934 screwball comedy It Happened One Night, the foppish bridegroom King Westley arrives at his own wedding "piloting" a Pitcairn Aircraft Company autogyro (although the real pilot can be seen crouching in the cockpit after Westley deplanes).

Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5

The 1927 William Wellman film Wings featured a Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5a amongst many types depicting World War I aircraft.

Ryan NYP

The 1938 Paramount film Men with Wings, starring Ray Milland, featured a reproduction of the Spirit of St. Louis fashioned from a Ryan B-1 Brougham.

A recreation of the Ryan NYP was used for the 1957 Warner Bros. film The Spirit of St. Louis, starring Jimmy Stewart as Charles Lindbergh.

SB2C Helldiver / A-25 Shrike

The loss of a US Navy SB2C Helldiver during launch during the 1943 shakedown cruise of the USS Yorktown was incorporated by 20th Century Fox into the 1944 film Wing and a Prayer: The Story of Carrier X.

Two USAAF Curtiss RA-25A Shrikes collided during a flypast for an air show near Spokane, Washington on 23 July 1944, the accident filmed by a Paramount Pictures newsreel crew. This footage was used in the 1956 film Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, apparently being shot down by a saucer.

SB2U Vindicator

Vought SB2U Vindicators were featured in the 1941 Warner Bros. film Dive Bomber.

Sikorsky SH-3 Sea King

CIA officer Jack Ryan (played by Alec Baldwin) is flown from an aircraft carrier to the submarine USS Dallas in a Sikorsky SH-3H Sea King in the 1990 film Hunt for Red October, based on the Tom Clancy novel of the same title.

At the end of the successful rescue mission for Apollo 13, two SH-3 Sea Kings, historically painted as Helos 66 and 406, retrieve the astronauts from their spacecraft after splashdown in the 1995 Ron Howard film.

Sikorsky H-5 / HO3S / Dragonfly

Sikorsky H-5

The 1954 film The Bridges at Toko-Ri, based on the 1953 James A. Michener novella of the same title, opens and closes with scenes of a U.S. Navy Sikorsky HO3S-1 of utility helicopter squadron HU-1 operating from an Essex class aircraft carrier in pilot rescue and recovery during the Korean War.

Sikorsky H-19 / Westland Whirlwind

The 1955 Warner Bros. film The McConnell Story, about Capt. Joseph C. McConnell, Jr., the top American ace of the Korean War, includes footage of a Sikorsky H-19 rescuing a downed B-29 crew in that conflict, while under heavy fire. A Chickasaw was furnished by the 48th Air Rescue Squadron, Eglin AFB, Florida, for seven days of filming at Alexandria AFB, Louisiana, in February 1955.

The character of Harold the Helicopter from the British children's program Thomas the Tank Engine is based on the Sikorsky S-55, built in the UK as the Westland Whirlwind.

Sikorsky S-64

In the film Independence Day a Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane is fitted with an array of flashing lights to communicate with an alien spaceship.

A Skycrane also appears in the film Swordfish, near the climatic ending in which it has a bus full of hostages slung loaded underneath, and is flying through downtown Los Angeles.

Sikorsky H-53 series

The Sikorsky MH-53 is also featured in the 2007 Transformers film as the alternate mode of Blackout. Production designer Jeff Mann stated "the Pave Low looks butch... the size made it the logical choice." Toys for Blackout were MH-53 replicas, which were reused for the characters of Evac, Spinister and Whirl.

The heavier CH-53E Super Stallion is the alternate form for the Decepticon Grindor in the film Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

The Super Stallion also appeared in the film The Sum of All Fears.

Sikorsky H-60 series

The Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk was the title aircraft in the film Black Hawk Down. Film makers paid the U.S. Department of Defense about $3 million to ship eight helicopters and about 100 crew members to the film location in Morocco.

Black Hawks were also featured in the film "Air Force One", again having been rented from the U.S. military.

In the film Clear and Present Danger a pair of MH-60L Blackhawks are used to deploy a special ops team, into a Colombian jungle.

Sopwith Camel

Sopwith Camel

The First World War Sopwith Camel fighter features prominently in the Biggles stories of W E Johns such as the collections: The Camels Are Coming, and Biggles of the Camel Squadron.

In the film The Great Waldo Pepper the title character, flying a Camel, takes part in a dogfight with a Fokker Dr.I.

Space Shuttle orbiter

The Transformers Combaticon named Blast Off and the Autobot Sky Lynx both disguise themselves as Space Shuttle orbiters.

The orbiters are all featured in the 1979 James Bond film Moonraker (film).

SPAD

The 1927 William Wellman film Wings featured a SPAD S.VII amongst many types depicting World War I aircraft.

Race Bannon, flying a SPAD S.XIII, fights a dogfight with a Fokker D.VII, flown by Baron Heinrich von Frohleich in Episode 10 of Jonny Quest, "Shadow of the Condor".

SR-71 Blackbird

In the 1985 film D.A.R.Y.L. the protagonist steals an SR-71 Blackbird from an air base while trying to escape from government agents.

The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird at the March Field Air Museum was prominently featured in a scene in the 2000 film Space Cowboys.

Although retired from service for over a decade, the SR-71 Blackbird appears in form of the character Jetfire, an over-the-hill Transformer near the end of its days, in the film Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and its toy line, which are SR-71 models.

Stampe SV.4

The 1976 film Aces High uses several modified Stampe SV.4 aircraft made to look like Royal Flying Corps Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5 aircraft. These aircraft were prepared by Bianchi Aviation Film Services and flown by well known pilots including Neil Williams.

Supermarine Spitfire

The 1942 film The First of the Few is a dramatization of the life of R. J. Mitchell, mostly concerning his work on the Supermarine Spitfire.

The Spitfire was a central part of the film Battle of Britain, a fictionalized account of the real Battle of Britain that one critic called "the definitive depiction of war in the air". The film led to an increase in the popularity of the aircraft among collectors of warbirds. According to one property dealer the appearance "did for Spitfires what the James Bond films did for the Aston Martin." Producers secured 35 Spitfires for use in the film.

The Spitfire was also the main aircraft used in the 1988 television series Piece of Cake. The series was based on a novel by the same name. Pilots in the novel flew the Hawker Hurricane, but the lack of airworthy Hurricanes forced the producers to change aircraft types, using five reconditioned Spitfires.

The 1951 film Malta Story centered around Spitfires and their pilots defending Malta in 1942.

In John Frankenheimer's 1964 film, The Train, a Royal Air Force Spitfire is shown attempting to shoot up a locomotive traveling light which gains safety in a tunnel. The helicopter filming the sequence was almost struck by the fighter during the shot.

A Spitfire Mk. IXc, MH434, depicted an aerial reconnaissance variant in A Bridge Too Far. It was flown by Neil Williams.

Supermarine Swift

The second prototype Supermarine Swift appeared as the "Prometheus" in the 1952 film The Sound Barrier.

TBD Devastator

Douglas TBD Devastators were featured in the 1941 Warner Bros. film Dive Bomber.

Thomas-Morse MB-3

The 1927 William Wellman film Wings featured Thomas-Morse MB-3As amongst many types depicting World War I aircraft.

Thurston Teal

Thurston Teal

A Teal TSC 1A1 appears in the long opening shots of the 1973 film The Wicker Man.

UFM Easy Riser

The UFM Easy Riser was one of two ultralight aircraft that lead the Canada geese south in the film Fly Away Home. The film was a highly fictionalized account based on Bill Lishman's autobiography and work with Operation Migration, but both Lishman's real-life migratory experiments teaching birds to migrate and the film used the Easy Riser, due to its low cruising speed, which allowed the birds to pace the aircraft in flight.

Vickers Valiant

The Vickers Valiant figures in Anthony Gray's 1965 novel The Penetrators, in which an RAF officer attempts to demonstrate a weakness in the North American strategic defense system NORAD by launching a mock attack involving nine Avro Vulcans and some Vickers Valiant tankers for inflight refuelling.

Vickers Wellington

The Vickers Wellington features in the films Target for Tonight and One of Our Aircraft Is Missing which both depict the different fortunes of RAF crews on bombing raids over Germany.

A haunted Vickers Wellington is the subject of Robert Westall's macabre, and critically appreciated, short story Blackham's Wimpy.

V-22 Osprey

In the 2005 TV miniseries "The Triangle", V-22 Ospreys armed with torpedoes confront and sink the protagonists' boat on the ocean as they approach the exclusion zone around the temporal phenomenon.

Two Bell-Boeing CV-22 Ospreys (of only three in the USAF inventory at the time) were filmed in flight at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, in May 2006 for the 2007 Transformers film. This would inspire a host of Transformers toys and characters based on the Osprey including the Decepticons Incinerator and Ruination as well as the Autobots Springer and Blades.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon, filmed at Northwest Florida Regional Airport and Hurlburt Field, Florida, features the CV-22 Osprey.

A V-22 was used to deliver John Connor to the Resistance's submarine headquarters in Terminator Salvation.

V-22s play prominent roles in several novels by Dale Brown, most particularly, Hammerheads which features a MV-22 on the cover.

In the TV series Stargate: Atlantis, Lt. Colonel John Sheppard contrasts flying a V-22 Osprey "You had to use your hands and feet with that one." to piloting the Ancients' city of Atlantis in the season three finale "First Strike". He gives the impression that it will be easier to fly the city – "This one you just have to sit down and think... Fly."

XB-51

A Martin XB-51 in Toward the Unknown

The Martin XB-51 depicted the fictional Gilbert XF-120 in the 1956 film Toward the Unknown starring William Holden as a test pilot. On 25 March 1956, the first XB-51 prototype, 46-0685, crashed in sand dunes near Biggs Air Force Base, El Paso, Texas, killing both crew, while staging to Eglin AFB, Florida, for filming of scenes for the motion picture.

XB-70 Valkyrie

The Transformers character of Silverbolt was upgraded to a North American XB-70 Valkyrie for the Universe line as an Ultra class toy.

Zeppelin

A German Zeppelin is shot down in the 1930 Howard Hughes film Hell's Angels.

A bombing raid by a Zeppelin comprises a major plot point in the Elsie McCutcheon novel Summer of the Zeppelin.

In the 1971 British film Zeppelin set during WWI, features a new prototype airship.

See also

• G-BDXJ a retired Boeing 747 used for film and television work.

References

Bibliography

• Gilman J.D. & Clive J. (1978). KG 200. London: Pan Books Ltd. p. 315. ISBN 0-85177-819-4.
• Gray, Anthony (1965). The Penetrators. London: Souvenir Press. ISBN 0-85177-819-4.
• Zicree, Marc Scott (1982). The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press.
• Wohl, Robert (2005). The Spectacle of Flight: Aviation and the Western Imagination, 1920–1950. Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press. ISBN 0-300-10692-0.

Further reading

• Call, Steve (2009). Selling Air Power: Military Aviation and American Popular Culture After World War II. Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 1-60344-100-X.
• Van Riper, A. Bowdoin (2004). Imagining Flight: Aviation and Popular Culture. College Station, Texas, USA: Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 1-58544-300-X.