Watch Les Archives Couleurs online: Episode 5 Combat America (1943)

Combat America was a 1943 film produced by the United States Army Air Forces and starring Clark Gable. The film is unique among military documentaries of the period, for it contains very little actual combat footage. Instead, the focus is almost entirely oriented to life back at their base in England. The films "plot" begins when the Henry H. Arnold, Chief of Staff of the US Army Air Force commissions Clark Gable to make a movie about a specific squadron, the 351st Bombardment Group. We see the men of the squadron as they are about to leave for Britain, flying over mountains and getting their last look at America, the narrator reminding the audience that this is what they are fighting for. Once they reach England by plane, they get settled at an RAF base and try to adjust to the local customs, particularly the monetary differences. There is no combat footage until three-quarters of the way into the movie, instead life at the base is chronicled, interrupted by short humorous vignettes starring Gable and the airmen, inclding an interview with one wounded airmen and his nurse. The battles are presented through the eyes of the air crew, watching the pilots take off in the planes they have worked on, then anxiously counting them when they return to make sure they all got back, and if not, whose was missing. The progress of the war is marked by a wall poster with names of bombed targets being added and swastica stickers beside them to indicate confirmed kills. Only at the end is footage taking during a raid of Nazi occupied Europe incorporated into the film with some interesting footage of a couple of ME. 109s being shot down.

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