Casablanca's Electra - touring the Bavarian Land - The AVSIM Screen Shots Forum

February 16, 20197 yr

From the Orbx's on-going SALE, I picked up EU-Germany South, and was looking for an aircraft to test this scenery. I selected (JF's) Electra, a plane I always wished to fly more, but have not. In the famous final scene of the 1942 film "Casablanca", an Electra was featured in Air France outfit (same livery used here in this post)

Casablanca, consistently ranks near the top of lists of the greatest (classic) films in history. In the climactic final scene, Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) and (tearful!) Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) say their final goodbyes, as Major Heinrich Strasser (Conrad Veidt) is racing to capture Ilsa and Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid). The Electra, meanwhile, warming up in the background (getting ready for flight to Lisbon) is one of the most famous scenes in cinematic history. The plane will carry Ilsa out of Rick’s life forever.

The plane was meant to be an actual Lockheed Electra 12A. However, when Warner Bros. filmed the scene, they found their sound-stage was too small to accommodate a real airplane, so the studio’s prop men constructed half-and-quarter-size models of a Lockheed Electra 12A out of plywood and balsa. Midgets garbed in jumpsuits were hired to move in and around the replica planes to camouflage their smaller-than-life scale, and the whole scene was swathed in machine-generated fog to further conceal the artificiality of the setting. But, of course, you cannot miss the (Air France) "Winged Sea-Horse" logo on the plane - from the Greek mythology (the Greek gods used them for travel). On the plane, fake registration F-AMPJ was shown (same registration used here in this livery), which belongs actually to a small single engine Potez 43.5. So, the airplane, in the film, pretends being a French aircraft from Air France, but, in fact, Air France never operated any Electra.

And, it has to be said, in the end of the film, when the police finally arrive, Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rain) has the opportunity to turn Rick in, but he doesn't. As the two men walk away and disappear into the fog, Rick tells the Captain his famous last words (often quoted along with a few others from the film) , "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." We guess, Louis is no Ilsa, but he'll do!

Regarding scenery, here, for this post, the plane is flying from (EDTD) Donaueschingen-Villingen towards LOWS (Salzburg) - across Lake Constance - along the southernmost border of Germany/Bavaria (i.e. Austrian border too) - tracking the so-called Bavarian Alps. Bavaria is the largest German state by land. it is Germany's second-most-populous state, and Bavaria's capital and largest city, Munich, is the third-largest city in Germany.

Thanks for viewing these images of this famous Electra, and, if you haven't seen "Casablanca", you may stop reading/viewing now and go see it. [JF(Electra)/Orbx(Germany-South)/REX]