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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

In the movie The War Lover, Steve McQueen (well, the actual pilot) pilots a B17 bomber "cutting the grass", i.e. flying low with the gear up. The stunt was to be done with models because it was too dangerous.

My dad was in the AF at the time, and was assigned to the movie as a consultant on AF trivia. He convinced them that the stunt could be done safely, and explained how to do it.

And so it was done. My dad got in trouble, because if the B17 had crashed doing the stunt, the AF would have looked bad. But it didn't crash, and the stunt was a big deal to the movie crowds, so he was forgiven.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGGynxYbA48

It's still freakin' impressive today.

His other contribution to the movie was the mission briefing wall maps.

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There were 3 B-17s in the movie. If you look close, one of them is named "Round Trip Ticket", which was the name of my dad's B-17 ride in WW2.

Sadly, the movie company burned all three to the ground after the shoot, in order to avoid paying the import duties the British tax people demanded. They didn't have the money, and didn't have the gas money to fly them back the US. They tried to give the bombers to a local museum, but the tax people still wanted the import duties, and the museum couldn't pay it.

What a tragedy.

George knew the deal:

I'll tax the street (If you try to sit, sit)

I'll tax your seat (If you get too cold, cold)

I'll tax the heat (If you take a walk, walk)

I'll tax your feet (Taxman)

https://genius.com/The-beatles-taxman-lyrics

Tax are also a way to contribute to the public good. Not paying the tax is refusing to contribute.

So although I do understand it's a sad situation, the movie team should have first made sure it could pay the tax and then do the stunt.

I'm sure the public good is served best by burning down WWII bombers.

In a paradoxical sense yes... Obviously in this case it was pointless zealotry, but one of the main purposes of import taxes is to artificially limit imports to favour internal markets, in this sense free stuff is actually worse than expensive stuff.

You mean so the domestic market for WWII era bombers is protected?

The hallmark of the bureaucrat is favouring process over outcomes. These people are the enemy.

I mean that this is the reason why import taxes exists, had it been with some generic item th UK manifactured mostly internally at the time it would have been sort of reasonable.

I am not a fan of calling people "enemies" I prefer to look at their incentives and context so that when can learn how to change them so that we will have less "enemies" in the future

In this case the airplanes had also an historical significance so it is hard to justify forcing their destruction.

> I mean that this is the reason why import taxes exists

If your point was about the generic usefulness of import taxes, then I have misunderstood you, no objections there.

> I am not a fan of calling people "enemies" I prefer to look at their incentives and context

I suspect you are in your rationalist phase right now, given the Scott Alexander link in your bio. I used to be one too. This is a good starting point, but it is just that - a starting point.

> can learn how to change them so that we will have less "enemies" in the future

What you probably have in mind is to have a civilized discussion among reasonable people and thus determine the best overall outcome for the best of all of society. Changing the system so that the resulting forces will produce different outcomes.

I'm not really qualified to elaborate on the topic of changing power structures (in essence: of the problem of governance), so I'll just stop here. But its a different problem than you imagine, and you will recoil from the things that are required to succeed.

Interested if you could elaborate further here or have some pointers to good references. I feel like I'm at a turning point in my life where I'm starting to see things a little differently. Sometimes bewildered by how little knowledge or control there really is.

> Interested if you could elaborate further here or have some pointers to good references.

Twitter is good. I don't want to recommend specific accounts. Keep an open mind, judge for yourself who has the best arguments.

> I feel like I'm at a turning point in my life where I'm starting to see things a little differently.

That number is growing.

> Sometimes bewildered by how little knowledge or control there really is.

There is a lot of knowledge, its just not evenly distributed.

How do you justify burning assets for tax purposes then? It’d be much better if they could simply give the planes to the taxman if they couldn’t pay the tax.

It's possible for a policy to result in an net positive even if it entails some individual negative examples.

it's a given for any policy, but we aren't talking about generalizations here; in the end, it's the particular that matters.

It depends on the alternative you are suggesting. No taxes? A bureaucracy so vast that can handle all imaginable edge cases? Individual discretion of the tax assessor? I think all these could fix this particular problem but might lead to worse outcomes overall.

i suggested the solution right there - forfeiture of the assets that the taxman can't get the tax for.

Ugh I must have been half asleep when writing the original comment (toddler woke up at 4am). I mistook your comment for a knee-jerk libertarian reaction, but what you propose does make a lot of sense. I stand corrected.

Some taxes are necessary, but taxes which people avoid by altering their behavior in ways that are bad for society are terrible.

Wouldn't any tax then be terrible, as people will always try to change their behaviour to avoid it and in general paying taxes is a public good?

You can’t avoid most taxes, it’s taken out before you see the money. Some history was destroyed here because of an inability to pay taxes. You can argue whether taxes are good or not but that’s what happened.

It's not realistic, but if the definition of a terrible tax is one "which people avoid by altering their behavior in ways that are bad for society" seems like it's catching pretty much every tax in that.

Most people don't start shopping at grey/black markets in order to avoid paying sales tax. Most people don't pay their employees under the table to avoid paying income tax. Most people don't move or de-value their own homes in order to avoid paying income tax. Those taxes make up most tax revenue, and wouldn't get caught in that definition.

So it's only those with the means to avoid the taxes are those who suffer under terrible taxes?

That's why pollution taxes are a great idea. You want people to alter their behavior to avoid the tax.

> They didn't have the money, and didn't have the gas money to fly them back the US.

Knowing Hollywood accounting (really just fraud, but "its always been done that way" so I guess its cool now): maybe they just didn't want to? Not that I want to excuse the tax apparatchiks, this is horrible.

Flying a B-17 is very expensive.

This reminds me of the bison on Catalina Island.

"! Fourteen American bison were brought to Catalina in 1924 for the making of the Zane Grey film The Vanishing American. After all that effort, the footage of the Bison didn’t make the final cut, and they do not appear in the movie. When filming was completed, the production company left the animals behind! "

https://www.catalinaconservancy.org/index.php?s=news&p=artic...

Here's how it was done:

1. do it at dawn, when the air is the stillest

2. have the pilot make pass after pass, each time a bit lower

3. have a ground observer in constant contact with the pilot giving the clearance from the ground

Still, I wouldn't like to be in the plane when at point 2. That's really low !

Planes are that low twice every flight.

Yes, but with their wheels down and at a much lower speed =)

Iirc ground effect is going to help a lot during such low level flight, in fact there was a plane conceptualized (and trialed) to never be flown out of ground effect. That's why it has such stubby wings, the ground effect itself makes up for the absence of lift area:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lun-class_ekranoplan

That's not to belittle the capabilities of the pilots flying in these takes, it's a very well executed maneuver and certainly not entirely risk free (assurances aside, such stunts have also gone horribly wrong). But it's not quite as hard as you might think because the ground helps to 'push back' in case one of your wings gets too low. The bigger risk is probably from cross wind, which would affect the plan asymmetrically.

That left bank on one of the mowing passes in the YT video is just heart stopping! A few degrees more and ....

>"cutting the grass", i.e. flying low with the gear up.

Unfortunately, one of greatest stunt pilots died doing similar stunt for the original "Flight of the Phoenix"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flight_of_the_Phoenix_(196...

A touch-and-go is not normally dangerous. Students do it all the time to practice landings. The error in that movie was the airplane was structurally unsound.

Kinda ironic when the plot made a big point of model airplane design being the same as big airplane design.

Sad when someone dies because of it though..

PS I'm surprised that thing was FAA certified. But this is really a case where a model would have been a lot safer.

That's neat, wow. Such a big plane at that speed and less than half a wing off the ground (so in ground effect).

This is another video in a slightly different fashion, but it gives a good idea of the feelings of the people present during a low altitude fly-over, especially an unexpected one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iOoiEbtf2w

If that was a movie someone would spill their coffee as a cliché :)

Ps that video doesn't do justice to how LOUD those things are :)

Ok, it's impressive, but unfortunately the YouTube video does't state the reason why this stunt was deemed necessary in the context of the movie. Hopefully not just "because it looked cool"?

> Hopefully not just "because it looked cool"?

Isn't that reason as good as any other?

Doing it with models would have been real bad I guess. Before Lucalsfilm, models were quite looking like models.

Just go look at a 1980's science fiction movie and you'll see lots of really bad model shoots, dynamics all wrong and so on (even the big ticket ones like James Bond movies got it wrong routinely). But the audience wasn't as spoiled and likely never noticed, I only realized how cringy they were on re-watching with my spoiled 2021 eyes and mindset.

I've really come around to appreciate the cringe. When you see obvious models or extremely bad painted backdrops edited in it makes me appreciate the attempt. Maybe I'll feel that way about bad CGI one of these days, but practical effects just hit different.

I think what also doesn't help is that resolution is just much higher today. A lot of model clips would have been smoothed over by the low resolution but these days we all watch the 1080p or 4k remasters.

Some stuff that stands out to me was star trek tng where you can see the wood grain in things like doorways even though they're painted. No way that would have been visible on TV.

Other stunts in the movie were done with models, and you can see how bad they are.

Even today, I doubt that buzzing sequence could be done as convincingly as the real thing. I've seen some aviation war movies done with CGI, and it just isn't quite right.

In the movie, the pilot (Steve McQueen) is a psychopath who is venting his anger at being sent on a leaflet dropping mission rather than a bombing one.

Buzzing the field is against orders.

BTW, B17 crews would sometimes buzz fields in WW2 to celebrate having completed their tour of duty and they could go home.

I don't think it is cool. Just think about the recent news about actors getting shot dead. It is a damn movie. Why risk the lives of actual real humans. People have no problems getting people killed for shooting movies but we can't even seem to take the slightest risk when creating new vaccines or drugs. Our sense of risk & probability and different reactions to human deaths in different situations are messed up

The War Lover had inflation-adjusted production budget of 23M USD, so this had to be used somewhere too.

Beyond that, there can be many reasons; for example, in a similar situation with Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afS5ks54tms

1) It's fun

2) Interesting to work on for the director and the crew. If this was shot with a digital screen and a fan, that'd super be boring to produce.

3) Brings good marketing

4) Can justify paying expensive advisors / raising more production money (these stunts are difficult to financially evaluate so they can funnel out budget easily)

5) It looks more realistic (though it's not necessary a quality, as the story-telling is sometimes more important than realism).

It is cool.

We're all adults and can make our own choices. Few things in life are free of risk (you drive a car I imagine). If I want to do a damn stunt I'll do it. Should we also ban most sports? Those are dangerous too. How about we stop building tall buildings? Lots of construction accidents there.

Also, the kind of accident that happened recently on set is vanishingly rare. There are a ton of safguards in place to ensure things like that don't happen and, in this case, at least one person was severely negligent.

> People have no problems getting people killed for shooting movies

They did indeed have problems with people getting killed. That's why the stunt was to be done with models until it was shown it could be done safely.

BTW, a few years later when my family lived in Germany, sometimes you could see the Luftwaffe hedgehopping across the countryside. It was awesome to watch. The cold war was at its height, and flying low was how one evaded enemy radar. The Luftwaffe wanted to be well trained and ready, and the hedgehopping also let the Soviets know they were ready and able.

Your comment just reminded me of this catchy BO-105 demo from the early 80's :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa8BhdcOjO0

Alec Baldwin was practice shooting at someone who wasn't even an actress. why? why even aim at anyone at that point? he's as much to blame as anyone else.

Did you compare deaths on movie sets to deaths during medical trials recently?

It's the exact opposite situation from what you describe, which is why it has been newsworthy. But I don't understand how your takeaway became the opposite of the described reality.

so many downvotes. I guess it only make sense to only make comments when you're sure the perspective is the most popular ones among the HN audience.

> it only make sense to only make comments when you're sure the perspective is the most popular ones among the HN audience

Or just don't worry about it. I have many unpopular opinions and posts :-)

You also have the best programming language in the world and a lot of people dispense only negativity about it.

Do you comment only for upvotes? Who cares?

Propaganda was and is vitally important to the western power bloc.

Yes, absolutely true as it is for all power blocs. At least we can say so openly though, and question it and even argue against it in public. I think those are freedoms worth protecting and promoting.

Have you seen Chinese or Soviet propaganda? It's terrible and amateurish compared to the subtle, brilliant, cool and therefore exponentially more efficient and dangerous western one.

I think that's based on a misunderstanding of what these two approaches to propaganda are trying to do. They are both highly effective, but at different things.

The primary means western propaganda uses is to persuade. It has to be persuasive because the targets can choose whether they believe it or not. Nobody has to comply, and dissenting voices and alternative narratives are available. Also it competes in a market for ideas and so there's a degree of selective pressure to improve so you're quite right it has become quite sophisticated whereas authoritarian propaganda can rely on excluding dissenting voices.

Soviet and Chinese propaganda, at least the types you're taking about, persuade by projecting power. It's about psychological domination, with heroic poses and strong simple messages emphasising the inevitability and necessity of party control. It's blunt design is part of the point. Thousands of gymnasts and marchers in perfect lockstep. Zero individuality. It doesn't matter if you are persuaded, as long as you get the message that you have no choice but to comply, and look, everyone else is complying!

Take the poisoning of Navalny. They don't need to persuade anybody in Russia that the state didn't do it. Everybody knows the state did it, even those that are pro-state. The point is to send the message, this is what will happen to you if you push us too far.

>Take the poisoning of Navalny. They don't need to persuade anybody in Russia that the state didn't do it. Everybody knows the state did it, even those that are pro-state. The point is to send the message, this is what will happen to you if you push us too far.

I don't think Fred Hampton was persuaded as you describe.

Absolutely, that was an appalling incident. It's a tragedy not just that it happened, but that none of those responsible went to gaol. Hopefully if anything like that were to happen today they would face the full consequences of their actions. It's much more likely that those in authority would be held to account nowadays, but still not certain unfortunately. We must continuously strive to do better.

Movie stunts and Drug development are apples and oranges.

I would be interested in seeing the numbers on prop guns fired in filming vs injuries. I expect it is enormous. The risks are simple, understood, easy to prevent.

Many of the risks in drug development are largely unknowable before human testing and we still use human subjects.

>I would be interested in seeing the numbers on prop guns fired in filming vs injuries.

I had a boss try to bring this up at lunch last week. "I was watching an old western and they have prop guns everywhere, how come no one died back then?" Pulling up a Wikipedia[0] listing on movie accidents brought up quite a lot of old western and war movie accidents.

Although it seems vastly more animals got hurt on set than people. A lot of early war/western movies seemed to be extremely detrimental to horses used on set.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_film_and_television_ac...

>I had a boss try to bring this up at lunch last week.

What is the difference between bringing something up and trying to bring something up?

NPr states the last prop gun death was Brandon Lee in 1993, so ~30 years ago. I still wonder how many movie blanks are fired a year. 1 million? 10 million?

https://www.npr.org/2021/10/22/1048295916/props-gun-death-in...

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