In practical terms only through the massive support of the US Army was it practical to make WINGS location filming was a rarity at the time as it was and WINGS was a huge shoot vastly bigger than almost anything before .
Even today filming on the real locations would have been tough.
There is a documentary that shows footage of the western front after the war from the air.
The scenes in WINGS look almost identical to the real sites.

I agree. Although the scenery was obviously "not France" the desert filming location really gave the setting a bleak, scorched Earth look. I mean, yeah, realistically, the trenches should have been filled with mud, but the focus was on air battles, not trench warfare.

Many of the battlefields of the Great War in France and Belgium
wastelands devoid of buildings and vegetation. It was an artillery war of unprecedented power (one German veteran called his memoirs "Storm of Steel") on a generally static front and shellfire reduced forests to kindling and many towns and villages were simply erased. Note that at Verdun enough shells were fired to have hit every square yard of the battlefield
times. Even today much of the field has the texture of a golf ball.

What a wit.
~.~
I WANT THE TRUTH!
http://www.imdb.com/list/ze4EduNaQ-s/

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Yeah, it's too bad this movie had to have a budget instead of just being able to spend as much as they wanted.