Product Details

• Actors: Chester Morris, Richard Arlen, Jimmy Lydon, Amelita Ward, Dick Purcell
• Format: Black & White, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Vci/Ffi
• VHS Release Date: November 14, 1997
• Run Time: 78 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6304763573
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #593,712 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Aerial Gunner, April 10, 2002

By 

Daniel L. Stockton "Web Master... b24bestweb... (Phoenix, AZ United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Aerial Gunner [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Although dated by today's standards ("Holy Christopher!"), the movie gives an accurate account of aerial gunnery training in WWII. For the first hour (of the 90 minute film), all aspects of gunnery training are portrayed. I fully enjoyed the epic, even though the characters end up in a B-25 Mitchell. (I'm partial to B-24 Liberators!) Well worth the watch!!

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not really a B-25 at all..., August 14, 2004

By 

Dr. van der Linden (Williamstown, NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Aerial Gunner (DVD)

---
...per the earlier review, but more properly a Lockheed Hudson light bomber (rated an attack plane by the USAAF as either the A-28 or the A-29), which was converted to a combat aircraft from a fast civilian airliner to British specifications before the war. Several hundred of these were taken expediently from Lend-Lease manufacture into USAAF and USN inventory after Pearl Harbor, and the Hudson is listed as having achieved the USAAF's first antisubmarine warfare (ASW) kill in the Atlantic after the formal opening of hostilities.

Interestingly, the bomber in the movie is depicted as having a tail gunner's position (it did not) and as having a single waist gunner (ditto). Hudson aircraft taken into the US inventory commonly had the big British Boulton-Paul dual .303 MG waist turret removed, to be replaced with a simple single-weapon .50 caliber dorsal firing station (like the one depicted in the movie as being manned by the radio operator). The previous reviewer's confusion is therefore somewhat understandable. Hopefully, enemy viewers of the movie also drew false impressions about the Hudson, and didn't as readily seek to exploit the aircraft's posterior and ventral vulnerabilities.

As for the film itself, the most interesting part was the depiction of aerial gunnery training, which definitely did include shooting skeet in order to give the trainees better preparatory conditioning for deflection shooting.
---

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Archie and Reggie vs. the Axis., January 14, 2011

By 

Michael Noga "Jumping kings and making Haste ... (Ramen Noodle Arms Bachelor Apartments near Chicago Illinois) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Aerial Gunner (DVD)

Chester Morris and Richard Arlen are lifelong rivals(like Archie and Reggie in the comics) who somehow end up in the Air Corps, in the same unit, at the same time, as.... (Drum roll)....Aerial Gunners! When they're not busy training with their .50 caliber machine guns they're busy trying to outmaneuver each other for the attention of the scrumptious Amelita Ward, who looks young enough to be their daughter. (I'm not sure if she was Mrs. Mugs Mahoney at this time. Ha! Imagine Mugs as a bomber's Tailgun Charlie!). Anyways the men carry on like a couple of Tom Sawyers trying to impress Becky Thatcher, which seems out of place since they are both well beyond the age when men typically do that. Of course one guy is the straight arrow and the other is the rat who learns his lesson albeit too late to do him much good. It's kind of funny how that happens in these movies. You'd almost think it would be better to NOT learn your lesson, that way you would at least dramatically increase your life span.

This is a typical WW2 propaganda movie which won't do you any damage but it's not really exciting or interesting either.