Our Story…Three Planes. Three Months. One Goal.

Airplanes of the Aviator

Hughes H-1 Racer

The H1 Racer was designed, built and flown by the Aero Telemetry team for the movie The Aviator. This beautiful airplane was built to simulate the World Speed Record attempt that Howard Hughes made in 1935 at Santa Ana, California.

Constructed of wood and composite material, the H-1 Racer used a 360cc, twin-cylinder engine turning a variable pitch propeller. The amazing half scale plane was designed from scratch, built and flown in less than 8 weeks.

Hughes XF-11

The XF-11 designed for The Aviator by Aero Telemetry was the world's largest scale model of the Hughes XF-11. It was flown several times at both Norton Air Force Base and Catalina Island Airport. The terrain at Catalina provided a historically accurate picture of the way Los Angeles looked back in the 1940's.

Flown from the main runway and filmed from a helicopter, the Aero Telemetry XF-11 provided the cameras with some of the most amazing aerial shots ever caught on film.

Spruce Goose

The Aero Telemetry designed Spruce Goose was the largest electric powered scale model ever built. Using eight gear-reduced electric motors, The H-4 Hercules or Spruce Goose, as it is more affectionately known, flew in the exact location as the original one did almost 57 years later in the Long Beach Harbor. 

Rob Legato chose to use a “forced perspective” with the film cameras. That and the huge size and scale of the airplane made the flying sequences very believable.

ALL AMERICAN AVIATORS

9 x 60 Documentary Series

Produced by Fighter Group Productions

Howard Hughes, Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, and the biggest names in Hollywood. The Aviator had it all.

The All American Aviators tells the incredible true story about a hard-charging former football player and aerospace entrepreneur Joe Bok, along with his gritty team of fabricators, as they bring to life three Howard Hughes airplanes for one of the greatest Hollywood movies of all time, Martin Scorsese’s Academy Award winning film, The Aviator.

The airplanes have to be built on a massive scale so they look realistic in flight and had to be completed within an unbelievable 3 month time frame.

The opportunity of a lifetime for Joe and his team quickly turned into a nightmare of non-stop bitter struggles to overcome sabotage, impossible deadlines, shifting schedules, and technical challenges after a tragic fatal airplane crash takes the life of a pilot and destroys the only remaining full-size airplane that was going to be used for filming.

Now, with an even shorter deadline and a whole other airplane to build, there would be no-room for errors. Defective parts from one negligent company and crooked molds from another, put people's lives in danger and set the team further behind schedule. To make matters worse, wildfires raging all around Southern California near The Aviator outdoor sets were causing serious delays.

After weeks of round-the-clock work with little or no sleep, tensions run high, personalities clash, and tempers flare as the contentious test flights put everything including people at risk. Thousands of hours of hard work and millions of dollars in equipment were now on the line. With safety as Joe's primary concern, failure was not an option as it would have likely resulted in death or financial ruin.

Physically exhausted and pushed to their limits, the team made one final, week-long super-human effort and overcame the pressure of impossible deadlines and never-ending outside adversity to successfully complete one of the most ambitious and extraordinary projects ever attempted.

In the end, Joe's team and visual effects Director Rob Legato achieved their monumental goal and provided The Aviator with what is arguably some of the most incredible aerial sequences ever captured in the history of film.

This well-written series also contains informative technical segments, stunning animations, and rare historical footage of Howard Hughes only recently unearthed at the National Archives.  These carefully researched and expensive additions to the show help the viewer more easily understand the complex problems, adversity aside, that Joe's team stared down and how those were related to the actual historical events they were trying to recreate for the film cameras.

Shot primarily at Joe's shop in 2003, this never-before-seen footage provides an ultra-unique glimpse of the stark reality that made up the unpredictable, dangerous, risky, intense, high-stakes high-stress world of The All American Aviators.

THREE PLANES. THREE MONTHS. ONE GOAL.