Best movies like Thundering Jets

An American pilot impulsively joins His Majesty's Royal Air Force in Britain in an attempt to impress his ex-girlfriend.

Life on a British bomber base, and the surrounding towns, from the opening days of the Battle of Britain, to the arrival of the Americans, who join in the bomber offensive. The film centres around Pilot Officer Peter Penrose, fresh out of a training unit, who joins the squadron, and quickly discovers about life during war time. He falls for Iris, a young girl who lives at the local hotel, but he becomes disillusioned about marriage, when the squadron commander dies in a raid, and leaves his wife, the hotel manageress, with a young son to bring up. As the war progresses, Penross comes to terms that he has survived, while others have been killed.

During the Korean War, Italian nurse Virna Lisi falls in love with two American fliers, Tony Curtis and George C. Scott. Lisi marries Curtis after he convinces her that Scott has been killed in a plane crash. She soon discovers Scott is alive, but remains happily married to Curtis until Scott re-enters their lives 14 years later.

This documentary on The UFO Phenomenon aims to show that some UFOs may be extraterrestrial and that secrecy and ridicule are regularly employed to keep the truth about UFOs hidden.

Lieutenant Johnson, a U. S. Air Force pilot, on the tip of Alaska, a few miles from the Bering Straits from Siberia, helps foil a Soviet plot to test a new secret weapon by loyal Alaskan Eskimos. He is aided by Sergeant Koovuk, an Alsaka native Eskimo also in the U.S. military service. Along the way there is an ice-floe evacuation, an air-ice rescue and a fight with a polar bear.

A Soviet nurse helps a U.S. pilot, his buddies and a scientist escape from North Korea. American International Pictures originally distributed this film as a double feature with "Suicide Battalion".

Tweety sits in his house, forlorn over the fact he can't fly outside like other birds because of his hungry feline predator, Sylvester.

John Wayne stars as U.S. Air Force aviator Jim Shannon, who's tasked with escorting a Soviet pilot (Janet Leigh) claiming -- at the height of the Cold War -- that she wants to defect. After falling in love with and wedding the fetching flyer, Shannon learns from his superiors that she's a spy on a mission to extract military secrets. To save his new wife from prison and deportation, Shannon devises a risky plan in this 1957 drama.

Russian terrorists conspire to hijack the aircraft with the president and his family on board. The commander in chief finds himself facing an impossible predicament: give in to the terrorists and sacrifice his family, or risk everything to uphold his principles - and the integrity of the nation.

When rogue stealth-fighter pilot Vic Deakins deliberately drops off the radar while on maneuvers, the Air Force ends up with two stolen nuclear warheads -- and Deakins's co-pilot, Riley Hale, is the military's only hope for getting them back. Traversing the deserted canyons of Utah, Hale teams with park ranger Terry Carmichael to put Deakins back in his box.

Inspired by Churchill's Dunkirk speech, brash, undisciplined Canadian bush pilot Brian MacLean and three friends enlist in the RCAF.

For Lieutenant Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell and his friend and co-pilot Nick 'Goose' Bradshaw, being accepted into an elite training school for fighter pilots is a dream come true. But a tragedy, as well as personal demons, will threaten Pete's dreams of becoming an ace pilot.

Army Captain Edward Hall returns to the US after two years in a prison camp in the Korean War. In the camp he was brainwashed and helped the Chinese convince the other prisoners that they were fighting an unjust war. When he comes back he is charged for collaboration with the enemy. Where does loyalty end in a prison camp, when the camp is a living hell?

When Doug's father, an Air Force Pilot, is shot down by MiGs belonging to a radical Middle Eastern state, no one seems able to get him out. Doug finds Chappy, an Air Force Colonel who is intrigued by the idea of sending in two fighters piloted by himself and Doug to rescue Doug's father after bombing the MiG base.

A joint task force operation between the Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Army has been formed to dismantle one of the largest drug cartels operating in South America. Multiple attempts to assault the cartel's mountainous compound have been thwarted by a Scorpion-attack helicopter piloted by a cartel leader, Eric Stoller (Bert Rhine). After having several aircraft shot down, most notably a pair of UH–60 Black Hawks and their AH–1 Cobra escorts, the army turns to the new AH–64 Apache attack helicopter, which can match its enemies' maneuverability and firepower.

Chappy Sinclair is called to gather together a mixed Soviet/U.S. strike force that will perform a surgical strike on a massively defended nuclear missile site in the Middle East. Chappy finds that getting the Soviet and U.S. Pilots to cooperate is only the most minor of his problems as he discovers someone in the Pentagon is actively sabotaging his mission.

Two Marine pilots in love with the same girl are assigned a mission to find a notorious bandit in Nicaragua. This early talkie from director Frank Capra, released in 1929, stars Jack Holt, Ralph Graves and Lila Lee.

A WWII pilot traveling with top secret documents on a B-17 Flying Fortress encounters an evil presence on board the flight.

Disgraced Top Gun fighter pilot Butch Masters leads a rogue squad in recovery of a WMD. Masters must navigate a fractured friendship, a love triangle, and must take to the skies to reclaim his military and personal honor.

The crew of PT-73 are in trouble again when Ensign Parker is mistaken for a pilot and gets shanghied into the Air Force.

A propaganda film, made in the early months of World War II, dramatizing a new group of U.S. Army Air Force pilots receiving their wings from Lt. General H.H. Arnold. An off-screen narrator introduces four of them to us; we see them before the war, during flight training, and in their first assignments as pilots.

A young Air Force lieutenant falls in love with fighter planes while his father, a Congressman and war hero, yearns for him to fly heavy bombers.

Air Force reservist Lt. Col. Robert "Dutch" Holland is recalled into active duty at the peak of his professional baseball career.

After learning the finer points of carrier aviation in the 1920s, career officer Jonathan Scott and his pals spend the next two decades promoting the superiority of naval air power. But military and political "red tape" continually frustrate their efforts, prompting Scott to even consider leaving the Navy for a more lucrative civilian job. Then the world enters a second World War and Scott finally gets the opportunity to prove to Washington the valuable role aircraft carriers could play in winning the conflict. But what will it cost him and his comrades personally?

Tortured into a false confession while a POW in Korea, Major Lincoln Bond returns to active service as a test pilot. Determined to clear his name, Bond battles a hard-nosed base commander, prejudiced officers and his own insecurities.

To impress a movie star, a U.S. Air Force crewman pretends he is soon to see combat. When his lie gets out, chaos ensues.

The story of jet pilots flying over Korea by day, from their Itazuke Air Base in Japan, and of their wives, on station with them, who have dinner ready when they return. Jane Carter (Coleen Gray), a reporter for a large newspaper syndicate arrives... she's also the estranged wife of the assistant squadron commander, Colonel Gil Manton (Robert Stack.) At first, she goes at her assignment of getting a story on the pilots wives with the same ruthlessness and persistence that broke up her marriage - but a mirror isn't needed to peek around the corner to where this one is headed.

At Portland, Oregon, playboy pilot Len Kendrick lands at the end of a cross-country record flight, met by his father J.P. Kendrick who owns Amalgamated Air Lines. Len is a media darling, adored by fans for his daring flights. He is in love with Amalgamated stewardess Kay Armstrong who is dating veteran pilot "Wad" Madison. Len dates her sister Penny who learns that his hard-drinking and recklessness has caused the death of his co-pilot. Penny knows that he was drinking before the fateful flight and only escaped prosecution by bribing a bartender. She leaves Len who ends up at Amalgamated as a line pilot, being tutored by Wad.

A group of cadets have assorted problems at the U.S. Air Force Pilot Training Academy.

Joe McConnell was sure that he was meant to be a pilot, but was stuck as a restless army private. It seemed that his ambition was blocked at every step.

A nuclear warhead launched by Soviet insurgents protesting the waning Cold War destroys the Ukrainian city of Donetsk. The destruction sets off a race between American and Soviet politicians to prevent a nuclear holocaust. While the U.S. president feverishly works to keep the military and political machine from going into overdrive, various subordinates panic. When the president is believed to be killed in a helicopter crash, zealous advisers take over.

A crashed UFO and its reverse-engineered computer system take over the minds of soldiers at an air force base. The alien entity (in the guise of A.S.M.O.D.S., (Asmodeus), a strategic flight defense systems program for fighter jets) is discovered by tabloid reporter Frank McCall and D.O.D. Captain Harry Anders. They escape the base in a stolen F-19 and are taken to the Pentagon, where their story is met with understandable scepticism. An attempt by Asmodeus' minions to capture Frank & Harry for brainwashing convinces General Anheiser of their sincerity, and they return to the base and eventually face Asmodeus and its army of brainwashed soldiers. Written by Dave Foster

A team of Air Force servicemen become stranded after setting up a weather station on an island of ice in Alaska.

August 1944. With the American Eighth Air Force poised to strike over Nazi Germany, British Intelligence learns that they could be flying into a deadly trap. With only hours to spare, Flight Lieutenant Edward Barnes must fly a life and death mission over Berlin in his unarmed Spitfire to obtain photographic evidence and save the lives of 1200 men.

An airliner filled with 800 passengers is forced to fly fast and low, above farmlands, suburbs and skyscraper-packed cities or the tons of explosives aboard will detonate. When an elite unit of US Air Force fighter jets is sent to provide escort, they find themselves facing a squadron of unidentifiable warplanes which ignites a deadly air battle that threatens to destroy all life above and below.

When a new airplane that's equipped with a new computer that can fly the plane on its own, is about to have its first flight. But the son of the owner decides to upload more software, he doesn't bother to check if there are any viruses with it. And he also invites some potential investors to try it. So the plane appears to be working well but suddenly it veers off course and it can't be shut down. When the military learns of this and fears what if something happens if it's over a populated area; decides to shoot it down along with everyone on board. The man who built the computer whose wife is among the passengers thinks if he can get on board he might be able to shut it down and regain control of the plane. So the military using a new plane gets him on board. But what he didn't know is that both pilots are incapacitated so there's no one who can fly the plane.

The captain of a downed airliner must help his crew and passengers survive on a deserted jungle island in the midst of a power struggle - an adult version of "Lord of the Flies."

After the American Army shot down a UFO in 1947, generations of elite commandos were secretly trained to deal with the aliens' feared return. However, the extra-terrestrials never came back and the elite force was disbanded. Sixty-six years after the Roswell crash, the aliens are invading Earth and only the over-the-hill retired commandos can stop them.

Two feuding half-brothers are both assigned to the same aircraft carrier. The carrier is sent to the Persian Gulf and their personal problems are put behind them, while they deal with a Iraqi military officer who has decided to stage a coup. The brothers move in to deal with the problem, but soon find themselves fighting the rebels as well as regular Iraqi troops. When one brother gets in trouble, the other comes to the rescue.

Tasked with training a group of untested new recruits, a no-nonsense Navy commander faces a host of challenges as he attempts to transform the greenhorns into a squadron of crackerjack jet pilots. Don Haggerty co-stars as the unit's second-in-command who clashes bitterly with the cocky young upstart of the team after the lad shows off with some reckless aerial acrobatics.

The story of Colonel Paul Tibbets, the pilot that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Although unaware of the full potential of this new weapon, he knows that it can do tremendously more damage than any other weapon used before, and that the death toll resulting from it will be huge. He is reluctant to be the person who will end so many lives, but as time goes on, the pressure upon him only increase.

In the shadowy world of drone warfare, combat unfolds like a video game–only with real lives at stake. After six tours of duty, Air Force pilot Tom Egan now fights the Taliban from an air-conditioned bunker in the Nevada desert. But as he yearns to get back in the cockpit of a real plane and becomes increasingly troubled by the collateral damage he causes each time he pushes a button, Egan’s nerves—and his relationship with his wife—begin to unravel.

Billie Dupree is a flight instructor at an old Texas airport. When a young girl in a wheelchair finds the airport by watching gliders fly, she decides she wants to learn how to fly. Dupree teaches her to fly with some special controls compensating for her handicap. Koup Trenton runs an aircraft repair service and is trying desperately to get an old airplane back in the air. The three, together, put the young girl and the old plane up in the air.

British Air Marshal Hardie is attending a party in Hong Kong when he hears of a dream, told by a pilot, in which Hardie's flight to Tokyo on a small Dakota propeller plane crashes on a Japanese beach. Hardie dismisses the dream as pure fantasy, but while he is flying to Tokyo the next day, circumstances start changing to align with the pilot's vivid vision, and it looks like the dream disaster may become a reality.

The Commanding Officer of an RAF Training School must deal with a difficult cadet, but the cadet reminds the C.O. of himself when young.

In the early stages of the space program, Capt. Jim Hollenbeck undergoes any experiment needed to ensure success in the new Air Force branch -- even though he's not required to be a subject in the tests. Always remaining a constant source of support, his wife, Pat, accepts his unwavering commitment to scientific progress. When Maj. Ward Thomas becomes the new head of the program, Hollenbeck must convince him of the necessity of taking the extra steps.

In the Korean war, the commander of an Air Rescue helicopter team must show a hot-shot former jet pilot how important helicopter rescue work is and turn him into a team player.

Colonel Ed Wyatt is regarded by pilots under his command as being a ruthless disciplinarian. His co-pilot, Lt. Hobson Lee, and Jo McWethy, a war correspondent assigned to the squadron become more friendly than meets Wyatt's approval. When Wyatt's plane is forced down behind enemy lines, he orders his crew to proceed to the American lines with the vital film they have shot, while he remains behind to hold off the enemy.

Captain Emma Fitzgerald receives a two year assignment at Nellis Air Force Base with the Thunderbirds team, the Air Force’s famed demonstration squadron. While there, her daughter Lucy becomes friends with Alice, the daughter of a civilian widower named Paul. The two girls hatch a plan to bring their single parents together, with Lucy hoping it will keep her mother from continuing to move around.

Follow the veterans and newest class of Navy and Marine Corps flight squadron as they go through intense training and into a season of heart-stopping aerial artistry.