"Sophie's Choice"

Something Different: Really Good Movies That Are Mostly Depressing In Nature

Sophie's Choice. The plot isn't revealed until the last 10 minutes of the film and will leave you depressed for three days.

Once Upon a Time in America

Dr. Strangelove

Kill The Messenger

Traffic

Girls of the White Orchid

Of Mice and Men

Lord of The Flies (1954)

Dr. Strangelove

Why, it extremely funny and teaches you to love the bomb.

Russian diplomat speaks with American President about Doomsday Machine or Dead Hand (presumable reactivated by the Russians few years ago), then Dr Strangelove (former Nazi engineer) explains how it works:

Yeah, it was just satire and was never meant to be taken seriously.

Dr. Strangelove

Along those same lines -

Link to the movie: Fail Safe.

The bombers in the film are portrayed using the Convair B-58 Hustler except during the final attack on Moscow, when the plane briefly appears as a North American F- 86 Sabre Jet instead. Also some on-board footage of an X-15 experimental plane launch is used to depict the contrail of the missiles fired at the last attempt to stop the bomber.

Nice night shots of B-58 Hustlers doing a Minimum Interval Take Off (MITO) at 16:09 into the movie.

The sequence that shows the B-58 bombers taking off from Elmendorf AFB in Anchorage, Alaska, is incorrect. There were never at any time any SAC bases in Alaska, that's all Alaskan Air Command in that area.The B-58 Hustlers were initially stationed at Carswell AFB, Texas, when I joined the program in 1960. They were moved to Little Rock AFB, Arkansas, and Grissom AFB Indiana, when they were declared combat ready. Moreover, the B-58 "Hustler" has a combat radius of only 1,740 miles, not close to the 4,000 miles each way from Alaska to Moscow. The B-58 bombers in real life had to refuel on the way to the targets.

The interior shots of the bombers, Convair B-58 Hustlers actually were shot inside of a commercial airline simulator then under repair at a a New York airport. The three crew members sit within feet of each other, in an open cockpit layout. In an actual B-58, the world's first supersonic bomber (and capable of twice the speed of sound), the three-man crew of pilot, bombardier/navigator, and defense systems specialist were separated by banks of equipment, and had no physical contact with one another. To make survivable ejection possible on such a high-speed aircraft, each compartment was specifically designed as wholly contained clam-shell "pod" that would disengage intact if the need arose. As a result, the crew had to rely on an internal telecommunications system to talk, or a string-and-pulley system that ran along the cabin wall to exchange notes if those systems failed.

Footnote: On December 8, 1964, at Bunker Hill Air Force Base, Indiana, a B-58 carrying five nuclear weapons skidded off the taxiway during an Operational Readiness Exercise (ORI) and struck an electrical manhole box and caught fire. One crewman was killed, and portions of all five weapons burned. The contamination released by the damaged nuclear weapons was contained in the immediate area of the crash and immediately disposed of.

The B-58 Hustlers were initially stationed at Carswell AFB, Texas, when I joined the program in 1960.

I was on the end of the runway in the Azores, early '58, when a flight of Hustlers were taking off. VERY impressive machine.

You were a crew member?

The B-58 Hustler became operational under the Strategic Air Command in 1960. I was transferred to Carswell AFB in Texas in 1960 to join the program as a Defensive Systems Operator (DSO – 3rd Station). I was in the B-58 program for ten years. I was transferred to Grissom AFB in Indiana when the second wing formed. I spent five years on a Select Combat Crew, three years as the DSO Chief Instructor in the Combat Crew Training School and my final two years as the DSO Wing Staff Officer. I crewed on the last B-58 flight in history. I believe I logged more hours in the B-58 than anyone with 1650 hours, many at Mach 2.0 during each flight.

You will no doubt recognize the pilot in the video linked below. He gives an excellent narrative about the B-58.

The Convair B-58 "Hustler" Supersonic Bomber - Champion of Champions (1962).

Maj. Henry John Deutschendorf, (shown on the left) flew a 43rd Bomb Wing B-58 Hustler from Carswell AFB, Texas, to six international speed and payload records in a single flight at Edwards AFB, CA. on January 12, 1961.

1961 B-58 Sets New Records.

Deutschendorf’s son, Singer/Composer John Denver was 18-years old at the time. John Denver found that attending high school in Fort Worth was a distressing experience. In his third year of high school, he borrowed his father's car and ran away to California to visit family friends and begin his music career. His father flew to California in a friend's jet to retrieve him and Denver reluctantly returned to finish high school. Denver graduated from Arlington Heights High School.

When the B-58 went supersonic, did the pilot have to reverse the controls to avoid crashing?

There were crashes, a number of them. Each crew member had his hands full at all times and we always had to pay attention to detail. We could never really relax from the time we climbed on board until we parked and the engines cut. We constantly had to think ahead of the aircraft to plan and anticipate. There was no sensation of speed at Mach 2 and only our instruments told us how fast we were going. The delta wing made the aircraft handle differently although the B-58 was firm, responsive and really a joy to crew in. We lost one in every four Hustlers to accidents. The attrition rate was high at 22 percent. I lost some good friends in those accidents, but the memories and the wonderful times together serving in the B-58 have remained with me vividly and strongly through these many years.

B-58 Hustler #080 at Pima Air & Space Museum, Tucson, Arizona.

There was a movie called "Breaking the Sound Barrier (1952) in which test pilots were crashing as they made the attempt. As one pilot was going down, he yelled "The controls are reversed at the speed of sound".

Later, our hero, fighting against his pilot insticts to pull up out of a dive, pushed down. The plane rose and broke the sound barrier. Yay!

Fiction, of course. I was foolin' with ya.