Born of the cold war, and eclipsed by success in rocketry, the XB-70 Valkyrie was conceived as a Mach 3 high-altitude bomber and became a valuable high-speed research aircraft. Although only two were produced, and one was destroyed in an accident, the Valkyrie built an impressive databank of high-speed flight invaluable to aviation development. This DVD, with nearly 4 hours of rare footage of the XB-70, newly transferred on modern telecines, brings you the flight test program of the XB-70 as never before. Contains rare progress reports, footage from rollout, extensive footage of test flights, and footage from the A/V-2 accident. All footage is color. Some footage is silent.
This documentary is about Bob Diemert of Carman, Manitoba, and his dream of building the world's next great fighter plane. His worldwide reputation as a genius at restoring "warbirds" enables him to finance his dream. The Defender is a lively, sometimes wild and funny, tale about a remarkable, modern-day folk hero.
Documentary about icelandic aviators.
In January 2012 Italian divers discovered the wreck of a massive plane off the coast of Sardinia. At a depth of 65 meters (213 feet) lies a Messerschmidt `Gigant', the biggest aircraft to fly in WWII.
Over the course of 199 flights, the X-15 rocket plane pushed the boundaries of aerospace with trips out to mach 6.7 and altitudes of over 350,000 feet. The extraordinary record of the X-15 has been unmatched in flight test, and remains a fascinating story of pushing experience to the edge of space.
A documentary covering the history of TWA, from its origins to its ultimate sale to American Airlines.
Framing the erotic vignettes in this entry is "Taking Off With Kitten Natividad," which is set aboard Electric Airways flight #11, a new airline hoping to cut out the competition with unique in-flight entertainment of a sexual nature. Stewardesses Kim (Michelle Bauer) and Sandy (Lois Ayres) help Kitten give the passengers a flight to remember. First issued in the UK as Electric Blue 11, this was titled Electric Blue 5 for the later U.S. release.
Clouds 1969 by the British filmmaker Peter Gidal is a film comprised of ten minutes of looped footage of the sky, shot with a handheld camera using a zoom to achieve close-up images. Aside from the amorphous shapes of the clouds, the only forms to appear in the film are an aeroplane flying overhead and the side of a building, and these only as fleeting glimpses. The formless image of the sky and the repetition of the footage on a loop prevent any clear narrative development within the film. The minimal soundtrack consists of a sustained oscillating sine wave, consistently audible throughout the film without progression or climax. The work is shown as a projection and was not produced in an edition. The subject of the film can be said to be the material qualities of film itself: the grain, the light, the shadow and inconsistencies in the print.
Fred Davis introduces us to Canadian Air Force operations in Zweibrucken, West Germany. Follow Green Section as they perform drills and explain what it takes to be a fighter pilot.
An eccentric history buff lives in a cabin in the woods but spends most of his time flying his biplane.
A film about the education of young aviators, which uses the natural interest of the youth in aviation and leads them through modeling circles and motorless flying to flying powered planes.
A celebration of those still flying the last remaining Grumman Albatross, a seaplane from a long-lost era of adventure and romance.
Meet Brian Boland—the beloved, eccentric hot air balloonist and artist from the rural Upper Valley of Vermont.
The film tells of the beginnings of the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. At the end of the 1950s, the Tanzanian National Park Administration wanted to fence in the protected area around the Ngorongoro Crater. Bernhard and Michael Grzimek were invited by the national park administration in 1957 to get a precise picture of the animal migrations and to provide the national park administration with the values they needed for their project. Using a new counting method with two airplanes, the Grzimeks found out that the migration of the herds was different than assumed.
Officially, the Wright Brothers flew first in 1903. But the Australian aviation expert John Brown argues that German born Gustave Whitehead flew in Connecticut in 1901. To display the Wright flyer, the Smithsonian Museum agreed that it will never claim that anyone flew before the Wrights. History may not be as certain as we thought.
A hilarious countdown of the black sheep of aviation, aircraft that have embarrassed their builders, enraged the owners and terrified their pilots. These are stories of aircraft that should have never been built, including highly imaginative concepts to “fly” tanks and jeeps directly onto the battlefield, a real flying saucer and starkly bizarre efforts to design and build a submarine that flies. We come to understand why these ideas were doomed from the start…
Barnstorming is the true story of an unexpected friendship that developed between a farm family and two pilots who literally dropped out of the sky. Their friendship has created a new tradition out of an old one long gone: barnstorming.
An exceptional documentary which presents, for the first time colorized archives, on Charles Lindbergh's life, the hero of the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean on May 21, 1927. A travel aboard the Spirit of St. Louis thanks to the magic of computer animation helps us to understand what he was able to feel during his crazy crossing. The fate of a man whose restless life reserves us many surprises: his membership in masonry, his relationship with the Nazi regime, his double even triple life...
Panair do Brasil revives the story of the most important commercial aviation company in Brazil, between 1930 and 1965, with its commercial daring in establishing routes to the four corners of a continental country, taking the adventure of air transport to never-before imagined places, as well as the first international routes. Four decades after it closed its doors, it still retains a marked presence in the country's collective imagination for its pioneering spirit and stories of heroic deeds and for the bewilderment which was aroused by the facts surrounding its closure during the military regime.
Two modern Red Arrows pilots take on the challenges faced by World War I pilots by performing photo reconnaissance, artillery ranging, and bombing missions in period aircraft - culminating in a classic dogfight.