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Probably
our most important job was also our most secret— in
fact, it was one of the better-kept secrets of the war, ranking up
with the atom bomb project. It was pure Hollywood product.
Everyone who has ever seen a picture based on World War II is
familiar with the briefing which preceded a bombing attack: an
officer, pointer in hand, using maps and photos to point out the
target and give helpful clues so that the bomber crews could
reach their objective.
All on
their own, our special effects men—Hollywood geniuses
in uniform—built a complete miniature of Tokyo. It covered most
of the floor space of a sound stage. Above this they rigged a crane
and camera mount and could photograph the miniature, giving
an effect on the screen of movies taken from a plane traveling
at any prescribed height and speed. Air Force headquarters was
naturally skeptical, but an impressive group of generals arrived
in Culver City to preview this Hollywood effort.
Our experts
carefully intercut their movies of the model with
real scenes taken from flights over Tokyo. Even though the gen-
erals were informed this had been done, they were unable to pick
out those scenes that were actually Tokyo and tell them from the
movies of the model. Skepticism turned to enthusiasm. Officers
of all ranks began arriving at our post accompanied by huge cases
of photos. The entire sound stage was out under twenty-four-hour
guard and even our own personnel were denied admission—in-
deed, any knowledge of what was going on except for the few
who would actually be engaged in the project. It was somewhat
reassuring to discover that Uncle Sam hadn't been quite as asleep
as many of us had believed in the prewar years.
Some of
the newly arrived officers were former missionaries,
botanists, travel agents. Their photographs had been accumu-
lated over many years. Just by coincidence, a photograph of a
butterfly would include in the background a factory or military
installation. Additional models were built of other principal
Japanese targets. By this time our experts could not only show
the entire bomb run over a target, but could repeat the run as
seen through the bombsite, and with the help of our animation
department give a third view as the target would appear on radar
if darkness or bad weather was encountered.
I got in
on this project as narrator. It was enough to make all
of us fearful of talking in our sleep, or taking an extra drink. We
knew the bomb targets well in advance, including the proposed
time of the bombing raid, because our geniuses—informed in
advance of possible weather conditions—were even floating the
right kind of clouds between the camera and the target. Bombing
crews in the Pacific would sit in a theater and view a motion
picture apparently taken from a plane traveling at, say, thirty
thousand feet. Beneath them would be the Pacific, in the distance
the hazy coastline. My voice, as a briefing officer, would be heard
above the sound of the plane motors. I would usually open with
lines such as, "Gentlemen, y0u are approaching the coast of
Honshu on a course of three hundred degrees. You are now twenty
miles offshore. To your left, if you are on course, you should be
able to see a narrow inlet. To your right—" Then I would mention
some other visible landmark. In this way we would take the bomb-
ing crew right into the point where my voice said, "Bombs away."
We kept these simulated bomb runs so authentic that, following
each raid, recon planes would fly their film from Saipan direct
to us so that we could burn out portions of our target scene and
put in the scars of the bombing. Our film then would always
look exactly the way the target would appear to the crews going
in on the next run.
This effort
was confined to Japan, because the war in Europe
was drawing to a close and there was little of Hamburg or Berlin
left to destroy. Only an outfit like ours could have accomplished
this task. Here was the true magic of motion picture making, the
climax of years of miracle-making that had made Hollywood the
film capital of the world.
from the
1965 autobiography
WHERE'S THE REST OF ME?
by Ronald Reagan
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