The Flight of the Phoenix (1965)

Lew Moran: Maybe Frank Towns, who's flown every crate they've ever built and could fly in and out of a tennis court if he had to, maybe that great hell-for-leather trailblazer's nothing more than a back number now. And maybe men like Dorfmann can build machines that can do Frank Towns's job for him, and do it better

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Lew Moran: You told Towns he was behaving as if stupidity was a virtue. If he's making it into a virtue, YOU'RE MAKING IT INTO A BLOODY SCIENCE!

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Frank Towns: I've lost five men, Lew. Gabriel in there, he's on the way, that'll be six. Are you asking me to try to kill the rest of them trying to get a deathtrap off the ground. I don't know... I don't know, Lew. It won't work... it just can't work.
Lew Moran: All right, then, it can't. Maybe it can't and we'll all be killed. But if there's just one chance in a thousand that he's got something, boy, I'd rather take it than just sit around here waiting to die.

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The Tallmantz Phoenix P-1 was designed by Otto Timm and built by Tallmantz Aviation Inc. for the film. It had the following characteristics:

• Length: 45'
• Wingspan: 42'
• Engine: a like-new Pratt & Whitney R-1340 nine cylinder radial engine of 650 hp, taken from a T-6, as were the wheels and various other parts.
• Wings: wing panels taken from a T-11 (civilian conversion of an AT-11 which is a Beechcraft 18 type )
• The apparent wing, tail, and undercarriage wire bracing was made out of clothesline, and was intentionally made to look flimsy.
• The fuselage and empennage were all hand-built from scratch - plywood over a wood frame.
• The cockpit was shallow and makeshift. The pilot sat down. Another person stood behind the pilot and was strapped to a stringer.

At least one of the aircraft used once flew for the US Marine Corps. The passenger information board inside the fuselage shows VMR-253, a USMC transport squadron, and R4Q-1, the military type designation, and the military serial, BuNo, 126580.
Dummies on the wings were found to blank the control surfaces, so silhouettes of the wing-passengers were used instead.
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