FOR MOST PEOPLE, THE MOVIE’S most memorable scene was the encounter between our bullwhip-wielding archaeologist hero and an Arab swordsman in a Cairo marketplace. After the would-be assassin puts on a menacing display of fancy samurai-style scimitar-waving, Indiana Jones, who has no time to waste, sets aside his usual sportsmanship and casually dispatches the black-clad virtuoso with a single revolver shot. Persons of unusually persistent memory may recall, however, that one of the film’s many other climaxes involved a fistfight between Jones and a gigantic shirtless Nazi – or Nazi employee, just following orders, since his party affiliation remained unspecified – underneath a big German aeroplane. That encounter ends when the certain victor in the unequal contest (that is, the giant) backs into a whirling propeller.
My son, showing that when it comes to a fondness for using big words – sesquipedalianism, I almost said – the fruit does not fall far from the tree, texted me: “Is the plane whose prop eviscerates a large bald man in raiders of the lost ark a real plane or is it a contrivance?”
No, I replied, the aeroplane was not real. But it was interesting nonetheless.
The plane was dreamed up by production designer Norman Reynolds. Designing a historically plausible and yet dramatic-looking Nazi aeroplane 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. It has been a fathomless mine of aeronautical nonce-formations, together with some remarkably prescient concepts.
This story is from the June 2022 edition of SA Flyer Magazine.
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This story is from the June 2022 edition of SA Flyer Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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