Trivia and Quotes
Quotes
 Lt. Ted Lawson: Goodbye.
Young Dr. Chung: I have one sorrow, Lieutenant. that we did not have the medicine to ease your pain.
Lt. Ted Lawson: You saved my life, Doc.
Young Dr. Chung: I hope that someday you`ll come back to us.
Lt. Ted Lawson: We`ll be back. Maybe not us ourselves but a lotta guys like us, and I`d like to be with them. You`re our kind of people.
Young Dr. Chung: Thank you, sir. Lt. Bob Gray: [pensively] When I was a kid, I used to dream about going someplace on a ship. Well, here I am!
Lt. Ted Lawson: And out there is Japan. My mother had a Jap gardener once. He seemed like a nice little guy.
Lt. Bob Gray: You know I don`t hate Japs yet. It`s a funny thing. I don`t like them, but I don`t hate them.
Lt. Ted Lawson: I guess, I don`t either. You get kind of mixed up.
Lt. Bob Gray: Yeah.
Lt. Ted Lawson: It`s hard to figure, yet here we are.
[repeated lines]
Lt. Ted Lawson: Tell me, Honey, how come you`re so cute?
Ellen Lawson: I had to be if I was going to get such a good-looking fella.
Ellen Lawson: Oh, Ted, I`m going to write you a letter every day you`re gone. I know they won`t deliver them. I won`t even mail them, but I`m going to write them anyway. That way we`ll kind of be in touch. That way we`ll feel close.
Gen. James Doolittle: [on the phone] Hello, hello, York? Dolittle. I want you to get twenty-four B-25`s and volunteer crews down to Eglin Field as soon as you can. The job`ll take `em out of the country for about three months. Tell `em it`s a secret mission. They won`t know where they`re going until they get there. Thats`s right, volunteers. tell them they`re not to talk to anybody. That`s an order!
Lieutenant Jacob `Shorty` Manch: Well feed me corn and watch me grow! How did all this scum get in here?
Trivia
The MGM composer Herbert Stothart quotes the catchy title song from the 1943 Rodgers and Hammerstein`s Broadway musical "Oklahoma" a number of times in his background score for this 1944 film. As none of the fliers came from that state, no one has ever determined whether it was a bit of unconscious plagiarism on his part, or a subliminal tribute to Americana.
The real Ted Lawson showed-up the day the scenes of Van Johnson`s character (Ted Lawson) was having his leg amputated. The mood around the set was quiet and tense.
The scars visible on Van Johnson`s forehead at the end of the film are not makeup, they`re real. He was involved in a near-fatal car accident the previous year just after filming A Guy Named Joe (1943). The filmmakers chose to accentuate rather than hide these scars for the post-mission half of the movie, since his character Ted Lawson was quite banged up, too. They`re particularly evident in the last scene of the movie when he`s on the floor talking with his wife.
Debut of John Dehner.
When Lawson`s plane arrives in "Tokyo" and sees the fire and smoke from the previous bomber, Davy Jones, we are not looking at a special effect. During the making of the film, there was a fuel-oil fire in Oakland, near the filming location. The quick-thinking filmmakers scrambled to fly their camera plane and B-25 through the area, capturing some very real footage for the movie.
Scenes of Lt. Col. Dolittle briefing the B-25 crews on the USS Hornet show a hornet`s nest on a branch in the background on the overhead behind Dolittle`s left. Because the actual Hornet was sunk in 1942 soon after the raid, this must be subtle tribute to the original ship and its crew.
Feature film debuts of Tim Murdock, Scott McKay and John R. Reilly.
Actual footage of the B-25 Mitchell bombers taking off from the U.S.S. Hornet was used in the film.
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