I was in the main arena earlier and remember hearing someone say that it was impossible for P40's to get in the air, much less get kills(like they did in the movie), well, I just watched a lil deal on The history channel about Pearl. A lot of the things in the movie that I thought was BS apparently were true. There were 2 P40 pilots who managed to get in the air, after partying all night in officers club like in the movie, sped their car to the field, got in their planes and shot down (according to the history channel) 6-8 planes. The movie accounted for 7.
There really was a black cook who manned a machine gun, and recieved the navy cross for it too.
Interesting stuff anyway.