"Keep checking sector 19. That base is there. I'm willing to stake the lives of other men on it."

Major Nick Reed

The First Motion Picture Unit

During the First World War, motion pictures were silent, and their production difficult. By WWII, however, advances in sound recording, camera size, and film stocks, meant that motion picture cameras could go anywhere a soldier could. And they did, as combat cameraman traveled the globe, documenting both training exercises and battles in order to educate future troops, and inform the general public.

Other training films used the art of drama to make their point.  While Army Signal Corps produced such films for ground forces, no branch of the military was more ambitious in this field than the Army Air Corps' First Motion Picture Unit.

The FMPU was comprised of top motion picture technicians and artists.  Writer, directors, cameramen, and editors who has been working at the studios in peace-time, found themselves right back on a soundstage after being drafted.

Among the notably talents involved in the Signal Corps or FMPU were Writer-Director John Huston, Directors Frank Capra, William Wellman, and John Ford, Cinematographer Gregg Toland, and Producers Owen Crump and Gordon Hollingshead.  Actors serving in the unit included Ronald Reagan, Alan Ladd, William Holden, Arthur Kennedy, Van Heflin, Craig Stevens and many others.

“Military Intelligence and You” utilizes scenes from seven training films: "Baptism of Fire," "Resisting Enemy Interrogation," "Target for Today," "Recon Pilot," "Identification of a Japanese Zero," "Ditch and Live," and "Photo Analysis for Aerial Bombardment."