When I first saw this movie at the Oklahoman Theatre as a 7 year old with my friend, Ronny Brown, we thought this movie was awesome! Well, not exactly. Upon viewing 50 years later and currently, SABRE JET leaves a lot to be desired. A whole lot! It was in Cinecolor when released in 1953...a sort of poor man's technicolor. Fighter pilot, Colonel Gil Manton's (Robert Stack) estranged wife, Jane Carter (Coleen Gray) arrives at Itazuke Air Force Base in Japan during the Korean War, as a reporter to write a story about "women who kiss their husbands goodbye in the morning and wait for them to come home at night." Only these husbands return from aerial combat against MiG-15s or facing AAA fire in interdiction work in North Korea. The last person Manton wanted to see was Jane. Robert Stack, normally a favorite of mine, plays the part like someone going through the motions to collect a paycheck, with the facial expressions of a guy with a cork stuck up his rear. It's no wonder that Coleen Gray appears nervous throughout, with a lack of chemistry between the two actors. Much better acting jobs were done by Richard Arlen (the Academy Award winning WINGS from 1927) as base commander General Robert E.Hale and Julie Bishop as Marge Hale, the General's wife. Much has been said about WWII stock footage shown throughout the movie, showing aircraft that never appeared in Korea, so I'll skip that. Korean War F-86 aces Bill Wescott and "Boots" Blesse, as technical advisors from the USAF, apparently had little to say about the implausible plot of having Sabres flying from Itazuke Air Base in southern Japan to MiG Alley in northwest Korea. Way too far! However, the film's focus on the wives demanded that they return to Japan. Wives certainly were not to be found at the South Korean Sabre bases at Kimpo and Suwon during wartime. It is 470 miles from Itazuke to MiG Alley, or a round trip of 940 miles. Round trip from Kimpo air base to the Yalu River (northern boundary of MiG Alley) was 460 miles. After a 20 minute patrol and/or dogfights in MiG Alley, it was a stretch for Sabres to return to their South Korean base with much fuel left. Sabre pilots were instructed to head home on "bingo" (low fuel gauges). Another goof was the Stack character's desire to fly an F- 86 fighter interceptor one day, then jump into an F-80 Shooting Star fighter bomber the next day to do air-to-ground work. Also, the General Hale character flies into MiG infested areas on a reconnaissance mission alone, which would have never happened. Of course, no MiG 15s were available to play themselves, so Sabres were painted light blue with red noses and red stars to double as MiGs. A Korean War F-86 veteran stationed at Nellis AFB in Nevada during the filming of SABRE JET told me that pilots would watch the painted up "MiGs" taxi by for take off, and they would give those guys the "one finger" salute! The most memorable scene in the movie from the theatre as a kid was when a 50 cal. round from Col. Manton's Sabre hits a MiG pilot, who pulls off his oxygen mask with copious amounts of blood coming out of his mouth. In edited versions of SABRE JET on late night B&W TV a few years later, that scene was far less dramatic.The Fox brothers, neighbor buddies (in the 50's) and I took turns wearing my leather jacket, a homemade MiG pilot helmet and oxygen mask, filling our mouths with ketchup, then recreating that scene and taking photos of each other when the blood (ketchup) ran down my jacket. Lots of fun until my mother saw my ketchup stained jacket! If the "Sabre Jet" name was to be used as the title of a feature film, I wish that this honorable, legendary jet fighter could have been memorialized in a better movie. For a much better Sabre vs MiG movie, get a DVD of THE HUNTERS.

This independent United Artist release is a small nugget of gold among a lot of aviation pictures made on much bigger budgets. Sabre Jet makes good use of aerial combat footage from Korea, nicely integrated into the plot of this film which is really about the home life of our fighter pilots flying missions in the Korean War from a base in Japan.I doubt the enlisted men of the Air Force did this well, but for our fighter pilots the Air Force provided housing and the wives and children lived on the base and though it looks tacky, it's like any other suburban community. The pilots just take off in the morning, do their bit in Korea and then come home for supper to home and hearth. The only difference is that some do make it home and some don't in Sabre Jet.Coleen Gray is a reporter and the estranged wife of Colonel Robert Stack whose been given an assignment to do a human interest story on the wives and she chooses Stack's base for the assignment. The two are estranged as Stack is an alpha male who wants the women home, barefoot and he'll take care of the pregnant department. It's a bit rough with Stack for her, but Gray gets a lot of good material from the other wives at the base. They want to talk about their men, they're proud military wives. Her best material comes from Julie Bishop the wife of base commander Richard Arlen. In fact some of the best scenes are with Bishop and Arlen and their two boys.The last 10 minutes or so are devoted to an aerial dogfight and the combat footage is well integrated into the black and white film. Like many other air films post World War II Sabre Jet is a recruiting film for the new United States Air Force. So for that matter is Top Gun made a generation or two later.Stack, Gray, Arlen, and Bishop and the rest aren't big in the hero department. They're the guys who have a tough day at the office and the women who wait for them. Sabre Jet shot on an F string budget is a nice film, no frills, but good performances throughout and nice aerial combat footage.

Uninspired melodrama combines with lavish use of stock footage in this cheapie Korean War propaganda flick.Although the Sabre jet surely qualifies as one of the most beautiful fighters ever built, you have to get more than halfway into this movie before you even see one. You can learn a thing or two about combining stock footage (in this case, beauty shots of F-84 Thunderjets and -- eventually -- the F-86 Sabre) with WWII-era gun camera footage into a slovenly simulation of ground attacks and aerial combat, but that's about the only excuse I can imagine for enduring this gobbler.I'm not one of those sticklers for absolute accuracy in every detail of a military film, but this one is such a brainless mishmash of piecemeal splicing it's often quite hilarious (if you're an aviation history buff). For instance, in the climactic battle, where they're supposed to be strafing and bombing an airfield full of MIGs, the planes getting chewed to pieces and blown up on the ground are obviously WWII-vintage propellor-driven aircraft, German, Japanese and -- if I'm not mistaken -- some American planes, courtesy of Japanese gun cameras. During the dogfight that develops as the Sabre jets fly escort for the bombers, pay attention and you'll see a P-38 and a LuftWaffe BF-109 go down in flames!Outside of its revolting message about the proper role of a military wife and its strident Cold War ideology, one truly shameful moment in this film occurs when the hero (Robert Stack) is ordered to blow up an ammunition dump hidden in a house somewhere along a road. So how does he identify this concealed dump? By randomly shooting up houses until he gets the right one! ("Sooner or later, I just gotta hit paydirt...")Don't waste your time with this threadbare nonsense, when there are far better films -- like "The Bridges At Toko-Ri" or even "The Hunters" -- covering the same subject matter.

A very good movie concerning the men who flew combat aircraft known as Sabre Jets during the Korean War. Robert Stack does an excellent job as a brooding combat pilot presented with the daily anxieties of life and death in the air over Korea while embroiled in a reunion with his ex, who is stationed at the same Air Force base as a journalist. Good interplay between Coleen Gray and Robert Stack in this role. The plot, of course, has been used before in WWII movies, but the urgency of the then new jet aircraft and jet combat makes the situations more tense. The air combat scenes are spectacular if you'll forgive the painting of American aircraft as Russian built MIG's. Along the same lines but based more on real characters is The McConnell Story, made two years later in 1955. Sabre Jet is a movie that will appeal to air combat fans with a decent storyline as well.