That Sinking Feeling

In a gutsy bit of pacing, Tex Avery pans up the barrel of a rocket launcher for 23 seconds, stopping at this drawing unexpectedly stating the obvious.



The pan continues, quicker this time, and for only a few seconds. The gun fires.



Some prints of Blitz Wolf cut suddenly to a scene with the Hitler wolf. That's because a gag has been edited out. The cartoon actually cuts to a shot of Tokyo and perspective animation of a shell sinking it and then the red sun (there was similar arcing perspective animation of a tomato smushing into wolf earlier in the short).



A sign drops into the ocean, referring to Admiral James Doolittle, as “Yankee Doodle” plays in the background. By the time this cartoon had been released in August 1942, Doolittle had commanded air raids on Japanese cities in retaliation for the Pearl Harbor attack.



After the war, this gag would have been a little tacky, so it was snipped from prints. Hitler, however, remains a target of derision for the ages, so cartoons featuring him are just fine.

Oh, “dood it” was a catchphrase of the Mean Widdle Kid character on the Red Skelton radio show. It seems to have gotten a workout at most cartoon studios at the time.

Irv Spence, Ed Love, Preston Blair and Ray Abrams are the credited animators. Tokyo is by an uncredited Johnny Johnsen.