On John Sturges’s 'Thunderbolt'

Thunderbolt is about a squad of P-47 Thunderbolt fighter-bombers, but before we learn even that much, something needs to be cleared up. A pilot sits in the open cockpit of his one-man plane, the bulbous glass canopy shunted back. This movie was filmed in real combat, the narrator announces, his voice a deep, deep bass. The camera pushes in. These are the cameras that filmed it, the camera shows, housed in the very planes that did the fighting.