Thanks to the general insensitivity of the nonspecialist public to the appearance of technical things, many visitors to the Florida show probably left unaware that they had seen not the original, grand and now pulverized German airplane, but a shrunken impostor. The shape of the original wing, which with its sagging center section, uplifted middle and downturned tips resembled an indignant seagull, remained. A new, more conveniently proportioned German airplane was required, and, incidentally, it needed to have tractor rather than pusher propellers and a much larger cabin so that human actors could still be accommodated in the much smaller craft and could conduct their fight - which ended with the disappearance of the German in a puff of red mist - in the space between the airplane and the audience.Ī revised version was duly produced with a bulging greenhouse cabin reminiscent of the famously asymmetrical Blohm & Voss BV 141 and with tractor nacelles elongated into booms supporting two vertical fins. Now, the original airplane was or was soon to become dust in Tunisia, and, at any rate, it was probably too big to fit in the new show’s stage. Exposed to the elements on the abandoned Tunisian set and pillaged by souvenir hunters, after 10 years it was finally demolished by a bulldozer.Ībout a decade after the release of the film, the German airplane and its associated evisceration became part of a show called The Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. It suffered, instead, the unseemly fate of most large movie props. Needless to say, it never flew, nor was it intended to. ![]() Screenwriters, however, are paid not to reproduce reality but to create alternative versions of it.Īpart from the strange center section and the unlikely placement of the vertical fins atop the engine nacelles, the Reynolds design, or contrivance, looked more or less airworthy. Generally speaking, the Germans displayed little interest in Hebrew memorabilia, and the Allies displayed little interest, until it was far too late, in rescuing European Jews. I must have been getting popcorn when the reason for the Nazis’ interest in acquiring the Ark, or the Allies’ in retaining it, was explained. The strange dip in the center section, on the other hand, must have answered to some requirement that actors be able to jump onto, or from, the wing, since it makes neither historical nor aerodynamic sense.įor the eponymous Ark of the Covenant, production designers had only to consult the Old Testament, which provides detailed instructions for its construction. The downward-turned wingtips of the Cobb creation probably came from the original configuration of the Northrop airplane, the final version of which, with unbent wings and a brilliant yellow paint job, may today be found in the Udvar- Hazy facility of the National Air and Space Museum. Creative Commonsīoth were twin-engine pushers. The Northrup N-1M is on display at the Udvar-Hazy facility of the National Air and Space Museum. The Reynolds airplane, a flying wing, seems to have been inspired both by an early Northrop prototype, the N-1M, and by an abortive German project of a twin-engine fighter, tagged Li P.04-106, conceived by the inventive Alexander Lippisch. ![]() Designing a historically plausible and dramatic-looking Nazi airplane was not difficult, since the German aircraft industry was by far the most innovative of its time and came up with many stranger-than-fiction designs. ![]() The airplane was dreamed up by production artist Ron Cobb. My son, showing that when it comes to sesquipedalianism, the fruit does not fall far from the tree, texted me: “Is the airplane whose prop eviscerates a large bald man in Raiders of the Lost Ark a real plane or is it a contrivance?” Early this year my son, who was screening a series of classic films for friends, put on the 1981 Spielberg pulse-pounder Raiders of the Lost Ark, which came out in the year he was born and, therefore, stood to him, in terms of the history of film and the decline of taste, as
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