RIP Brian Hutton

[anonymous-user]

Yeah, and that German dude had the wrong sort of epaulettes and all.

[Mr_B]

Tango13 said:

Breadvan72 said:

It was OK, ish, if you overlooked the fact that there were no Spitfire Squadrons based in France in 1940.

When it was first broadcast the producers stated that part of the reason for using Spitfires was that there would be far too many arm chair experts picking holes in squadron numbers and insignia if they used Hurricanes.

They obviously foresaw the rise of the internet pedant

A pre-production picture of the series appeared in The Independent 6 months before broadcast and had a ton of people writing in to complain about how a squadron operating in France should be using Hurricanes, which is of course correct and how the novel was originally written.

At the time of filming there were 3 airworthy Hurricanes. Two were with the BBMF and one in Canada and a non-starter for filming as the BBMF limits their flying hours and probably wouldn't have been able/willing to hire out for a TV series for the hours needed.

The Squadron codes used in the filming were quickly dropped and they limited the effect of having a larger number of aircraft than they did, which was a max of 5 airworthy , plus the fact they were only temporarily applied and designed to be changed easily to avoid the above limiting factor and often came of while filming taking paint and causing a lot of expensive downtime.

Edited by Mr_B on Friday 29th August 22:14

[Halmyre]

Breadvan72 said:

633 Squadron suffers from daft casting - Greek dude plays Norwegian hero. Surely the Wild Geese is just another far fetched shoot 'em up thriller in the WED mode, not really a war movie.

I never understood that either. Particularly since the actress playing his sister is an archetypal Scandinavian blonde (she's actually Austrian, by the way) who looks nothing like him.

[Mr_B]

Breadvan72 said:

Do you remember Wings? (RFC stuff on the Beeb). That reminds me, top WW1 film: Aces High. A sort of merger of Journey's End and Sagittarius Rising. Blue Max = pants.

Also, the best ever POW movie and one of the most humane and wonderful of all films: La Grande Illusion.

I don't remember either. Google time.

[Eric Mc]

I actually like "Aces High" - and it does have a Ron Goodwin score - which seems awfully like a recycled version of the German theme from "Battle of Britain".

[rasto]

Eric Mc said:

I actually like "Aces High" - and it does have a Ron Goodwin score - which seems awfully like a recycled version of the German theme from "Battle of Britain".

My parents gave me the Aces High book as a Christmas present when I was 11, they obviously didn't realise there were some quite racy bits in there (when he visits the prostitute) otherwise I don't think they would have chosen it as a gift. At 11 I didn't really grasp the whole horror of the story, but on subsequent re-reads it did make more of an impact. The racy bits were quite popular with my school friends though I still have the book somewhere, might be time to read it again.

[Eric Mc]

They probably thought it was a Biggles story - although I do remember Biggles getting very mildly racy with a girl - who turned out to be a German spy.

[anonymous-user]

Early Biggles was rather good and a bit more grown up than the later Boys' Own stuff. Biggles is first introduced as a nineteen year old back shooter with PTSD.