The Pearl Harbor Movie Scene That Accidentally Filmed A Real Plane Crash

A scene in “Tora! Tora! Tora!,” the 1970 Pearl Harbor movie, sent stuntmen running for their lives during a real-life airplane crash.

By Josh Skovlund for Task & Purpose

The 1970 movie “Tora! Tora! Tora!” chronicles the attack on Pearl Harbor and billed itself as featuring some of the most realistic combat footage in Hollywood history — a claim more true than even the makers originally intended.

During the movie’s central attack, filmmakers captured an on-set mishap in which a full-size World War II fighter plane actually crashed as the cameras rolled, and caroomed across a flightline filled with actors and stuntmen — who had to sprint for their actual lives — just steps ahead of the fiery crash.

The crash footage is included in the movie, and you can watch one stuntman, in particular, evade almost certain death by just an instant, sprinting and then crawling away as the plane’s flaming hulk tumbles directly over where he had been standing moments before.

“Tora! Tora! Tora!”  was a massive production, filled with major Hollywood stars of the time, that depicted both the American and Japanese sides of the Pearl Harbor attacks of Dec. 7, 1941. Long before the age of computer animation, its combat scenes featured replica planes that matched American and Japanese aircraft from the 1941 raid.

The movie was full of real explosions, timed by the crew to go off as planes flew by, simulating dropped bombs. There’s also plenty of footage of American sailors — played by stuntmen — fighting back and being caught in the explosions of the Japanese bombs.

Charlie Piecerni was a novice stuntman in the film. He detailed his experience during a phone interview with Historynet.com in 2021. He recalled being set on fire and launched 70 feet into the air off a burning ship into burning water.

“We were on this ship, firing machine guns, cursing and screaming,” Picerni told Historynet.com. “If you worked on this movie, you thought you were in World War II. This was real. There was no faking, no bullshit.”

He was also at the fateful plane crash scene, filmed in Oahu, Hawaii.

The scene was meant to show one of the American fighter planes that managed to take off the morning of the attack. For filming, the plane was a radio-controlled Curtiss P-40E Warhawk, loaded with gasoline and explosives. It was set to explode seconds after leaving the runway.

But with cameras rolling, a sheered prop sent the plane spinning out of control on the runway, directly toward a hanger, where a line of fake planes, formed from paper mache, were lined up. Along the line, 15 stuntmen were scattered around the hangar to resemble American service members.

As the stunt goes wrong, the stuntmen run for their lives, most sprinting for the hangar, while several are caught in the open tarmac as the flaming hulk tumbles toward them.

“We were running for our lives, and the men that were running from the airplanes had the desire to dive on the tarmac and dig themselves in — [while] shrapnel was flying everywhere through the sequence. You couldn’t duplicate it today,” said stuntman Phil Adams during a Hollywood FX Masters interview. “Ironically, it was used in the film and it was probably some of the best footage that we shot that day. And we’ll go on to make other films, but you look back on that and thank your lucky stars and thank god that you didn’t have that run up your backside.” 

One stuntman, Joe Finnegan, comes just an eyelash for on-screen death. He sprints full speed from the crash, but the tumbling, flaming plane closes in on him. You can see how close Finnegan was to the flames by watching a red standing fire extinguisher. As he runs, Finnegan dives just a few yards past the extinguisher. Seconds later the plane strikes the extinguisher, rolling over it before coming to a halt. Finnegan then bear-crawls to safety behind a car nearby with a second cast member.

Finnegan was credited for developing the air ram for Tora! Tora! Tora!’s production, a great advancement for realistic depictions of people getting thrown through the air.

The film garnered numerous Oscar nominations, most notable of them all: Best Effects, Special Visual Effects in 1971.

Find the original article at Task & Purpose.

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