By coincidence, just yesterday I was rewatching the 1944 film “Wing and a Prayer” with Dana Andrews, which includes a scene where an aircraft director is giving signals to a nervous carrier pilot who’s preparing for his first take-off after being on stress leave. He leans forward, arms hanging straight down, hands facing each other, fingers curled into scoops, and repeatedly swings his arms to bring his hands close together then far apart. Translation: You forgot to close your bomb bay doors. The pilot fixes the mistake. The plane director signals the plane to move forward a bit, then sees something else he doesn’t like. He extends his arms horizontally to full length, palms together, fingers flat, hands horizontal, then repeatedly opens and closes his hands, using the heels of his hands like a hinge. Translation: You forgot to extend your flaps. The pilot fixes that mistake too. Up on the carrier’s island, the ship’s Air Ops officer is getting mightily annoyed with the pilot for messing up his preflight checklist so badly. The pilot eventually takes off, but misjudges his airspeed and immediately ends up in the drink; he gets fished out by a destroyer, while his plane sinks. I can just imagine the kind of non-regulation hand signals that the Air Ops officer might have wanted to give this guy at that point, but the 1940s Hollywood production code wouldn’t have allowed that kind of thing to be shown onscreen.
