Scene of the Week: Memphis Belle

The Boeing B-17 was known as the Flying Fortress for a couple of reasons. one being that it was fully decked out with machine guns on top of its explosive payload and second because it was as big as a fortress. The bomber was mainly used in the European theatre of WWII dropping bombs all over Germany. As you can imagine, the Luftwaffe made this dangerous work. That is why when a flight crew completed 25 missions they were able to return home. The Memphis Belle was one of the first planes to complete all 25 missions and almost immediately became famous from a 1944 documentary Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress and returned to fame in a 1990 movie just named Memphis Belle.

This week’s Scene of the Week takes a look at the difficulty the B-17 and her crew faced while making a bombing run as the Germans come with a hit and run from the 1990 movie Memphis Belle. The crew is loaded with recognizable Hollywood faces and you quickly learn why the Flying Fortress had guns at pretty much every position on the plane.