Aircraft in fiction
Various real-world aircraft have long made significant appearances in fictional works, including books, films, toys, TV programs, video games, and other media. History The first aviation film was the 1911 William J. Humphrey–directed two-reeler, The Military Air-Scout, shot after an Aero Club of America flying meet at Long Island, New York. The stunt flying was done by Lt. Henry Arnold, "who picked up 'a few extra bucks' for his services" and "became so excited about movies that he almost quit the Army to become an actor." The years between World War I and World War II saw extensive use of aircraft, a new technology, in film, a new medium. In the early 1920s, Hollywood studios made dozens of now-obscure "aerial Westerns" with leads such as Tom Mix and Hoot Gibson, where the role of the horse was taken by aircraft, or used aircraft as nothing more than vehicles for stunts to excite audiences. In 1926, the first "proper" aviation film was made; Wings is a story of two pilots who sign up to fly and fight in the First World War. Made with the cooperation of the United States' then-Department of War (a relationship that continues to this day), it used front-line military aircraft of the day such as the Thomas-Morse MB-3 and Boeing PW-9, flown by military pilots. Future U.S. Air Force generals Hap Arnold and Hoyt Vandenberg were among the military officers involved with the production: Arnold as a technical consultant and Vandenberg as one of the pilots. Wings was a box-office hit when it achieved general release in 1929 and went on to win the award for Best Production at the first Academy Awards. In Fascist Italy in the 1930s, aviation-themed films were used as propaganda tools to complement the massed flights led by Italo Balbo in promoting the regime domestically and abroad. One such film was the most successful Italian film of the pre-World War II era; Luciano Serra pilota (Luciano Serra, Pilot) was inextricably linked to the Fascist government via Mussolini's son Vittorio, who was the driving force behind the film's production. The film, set between 1921 and the Italo-Abyssinian War, was used to compare the allegedly moribund state of aviation in pre-Fascist Italy with the purported power of the Regia Aeronautica and Italian aviation in general in the 1930s. However, by the time that Luciano Serra pilota was shown at the 1938 Venice Film Festival, the link between aviation and Fascism had already been firmly established in the minds of the Italian people through widespread depictions of aircraft in a variety of media. For example, there was an entire branch of the Futurist Art movement devoted to aviation, known as Aeropittura ("Aeropainting"). While many of the Aeropittura works were devoted to flight rather than aircraft per se, some did celebrate Italian aviation exploits, such as Alfredo Ambrosi's Il volo su Vienna (The Flight over Vienna) which depicted in Futurist style the World War I exploit of Gabriele d'Annunzio; although the city of Vienna is