AOPA member produces new movie

Sharing his son’s passion for film in ‘Wolf Hound’

July 1, 2022 By Julie Summers Walker

Steve Chait is a commercial pilot, Beechcraft Debonair owner, and practicing aviation attorney in Michigan. He now adds “movie producer” to his list of accomplishments.

Michael Chait and Steve Chait.

Aviation History

Who flew westbound?

First place lost to history

By Ian J. Twombly

You have heard of the first person to fly across the Atlantic Ocean solo. We all have. The whole world has. Lindbergh went east. But do you know who first flew the vast expanse westbound?

Three European pilots, Günther von Hünefeld, James Fitzmaurice, and Hermann Köhl, made the trip west in a custom Junkers roughly 11 months after Lindbergh headed in the other direction (John Alcock and Arthur Brown flew together nonstop eastbound in June 1919). Thought to be impossible at the time, the trio departed Ireland for Long Island, New York, on April 12, 1928. The next day, lost and low on fuel, they landed on what they assumed was an iceberg. It turned out to be Greenly Island, a small outpost two miles off mainland Quebec.

News quickly spread that the three had done it, although they had landed well short of their intended destination. A major parade in New York was followed by a quick American tour, and then an arduous rescue of the airplane before it was shipped back to Europe.

The airplane was dubbed the Bremen, and despite the success, certain museums in Germany didn’t want it, and the Junkers spent more than 60 years in Henry Ford’s private collection on display at the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation. Ironic because Junkers had successfully sued Ford twice for appropriating the metal corrugated skin design technique. In 1997 the museum approved a permanent loan that brought the airplane back across the ocean, its fourth trip, where it is now installed at the Bremen Airport.

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Wolf Hound marks the feature film directorial debut of his son Michael B. Chait. The film relies heavily on the Chaits’ aviation knowledge and on aircraft and scenes from Michigan’s Yankee Air Museum in Belleville. The museum’s bomber plant hangar was used for location and its North American B–25 Mitchell Rosie’s Reply and Boeing B–17 appear in the movie.

Wolf Hound is inspired by true events. It takes place in 1944 in German-occupied France. A Jewish-American fighter pilot is shot down behind enemy lines and must work to rescue a captured B–17 Flying Fortress crew. He discovers that the Germans are loading a U.S.-marked aircraft with a superbomb. Inspired by the real-life German special operations unit KG 200 that shot down, repaired, and flew Allied aircraft as “trojan horses,” the movie features the Boeing B–17, North American P–51 Mustangs, a Supermarine Spitfire, Hawker Hurricane, the Mitchell, and a Messerschmitt Bf 109. The Spitfire, Hurricane, P–51s, Bf 109, and B–25 came from the Military Aviation Museum founded and owned by Gerald Yagen and located in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Most of the aerial sequences were shot in Virginia Beach and Suffolk, Virginia. The Military Aviation Museum’s B–25 Wild Cargo was used for aerial and exterior shots.

“Growing up around airports and in the aviation world because of my dad, I managed to make quite a few connections in the airshow and pilot communities and was fortunate enough to direct two commercials for the U.S. Air Force/Air National Guard after college, and then several for The Yankee Air Museum,” said Michael Chait. “World War II was always a fascinating subject at my family’s house. I am a Jewish man from a Jewish family, so the emotion and weight of what World War II meant has always hit me hard. I wanted to make audiences’ jaws drop with incredible aerial action sequences, with real World War II fighters and bombers instead of CG, and real ground action scenes with lots of stunts, explosions, and gunfire, but always putting character, emotion, and the underdog hero story front and center.”

Michael Chait directed from the screenplay by Timothy Ritchey. Craig Hosking was the aerial coordinator and lead pilot; he performed those same roles in the 2017 movie Dunkirk. Along with cinematographer Westley Gathright (who worked with Chait on his airplane documentary B–52: Three Generations) and aerial director of cinematography Dwayne McClintock, the team captured live action footage with minimal use of digital effects. Forty-five minutes of the film’s 120-minute run features aerial sequences.

The movie stars James Maslow and Trevor Donovan and is in select theaters and on demand June 3; home release on Blu-ray and DVD is July 12.

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