HBO's The Mighty Eighth TV series

[GoldenRivet]

Originally Posted by razark

I'd probably have a better opinion if they had just made up a fictional name for the film, instead of attaching a fictional story to a real name.

Thanks for all the info above. You've kept my hope of seeing this series alive.

Supposedly the plot of the 1990 film Memphis Belle was written around an amalgamation of multiple missions the belle experienced combined into a single mission for the film. as with all things hollywood there must be embellishment or else audiences wont show as much interest. the final mission of the belle was not into Germany as the film portrays, but was in fact a raid on Lorient

the actual "final mission" of the Belle was documented by the US Army Signal Corps via several cameramen on different bombers, primarily the filming was done aboard the Memphis Belle and released in a morale building film called The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress the filming was actually of the aircraft's second to last mission. Sadly, some of the Signal Corps cameramen found their fate aboard B-17s on this very mission having been shot down not only with the loss of life, but the historic footage they were shooting aboard the bombers having also been lost forever

the 1990 film is very similar to the 1943 documentary and borrows much from it, in fact many of the air to air battle scenes in the 1990 film are scripted almost entirely from the air to air battle scenes in the '43 film, and the takeoff scene from the 1990 film is almost verbatim a copy of the 43 film

for those interested, the original, full version of the 1943 documentary can be seen here, it is 41:30 in length and in my opinion worth a viewing if you havnt seen it