X-Nico

4 unusual facts about Frank Tallman


B-25 Mitchell aircraft in Catch-22

Tallmantz president, Frank G. Tallman ended up finding war-surplus aircraft, and eventually gathered not only pilots to fly the aircraft but also a ground support crew to maintain the fleet.

When Catch-22 began preliminary production, Paramount made a decision to hire the Tallmantz Aviation organization to obtain sufficient B-25 Mitchell bomber aircraft to recreate a Mediterranean wartime base as depicted in the Joseph Heller novel of the same name.

Frank Tallman

Mantz was killed in 1965 while flying a cobbled-together aircraft, the Tallmantz Phoenix P-1, designed with the assistance of Otto Timm, representing the fictional type built by oil explorers of pieces of their crashed Fairchild C-82 Packet downed in the North African desert in The Flight of the Phoenix.

Tallman flew the dramatic night shots of the Milo Minderbinder Air Force B-25 bombing its own base just over the heads of actors Jon Voight and Martin Sheen.



see also

Garland-Lincoln LF-1

In 1975, Frank Tallman piloted the repainted the LF-1 to appear in The Great Waldo Pepper.

Man Without a Gun

The co-star was Mort Mills, as Marshal Frank Tallman, who intervened when the "pen" proved not to be "mightier than the sword".