Douglas Bader - C4 (28th) at 7 p.m.

[PPRuNe Pop]

The programme seeks to discover if Bader was shot down or collided with a German aircraft in a fight.

The RAF official records show that Bader was shot down. Paul Brickhill's book "Reach for the Sky" follows the collision scenario as told to him by Bader.

The prog may or may not provide the real answer.

[Polikarpov]

In other military aviation related televisual news, same day (28th)

Times review:


Red Arrows(BBC1, 5pm to 6pm)
Julia Bradbury tells us at the start of this documentary that the Red Arrows have no purpose other than as a PR tool for the RAF, designed to dazzle youngsters into joining up. The same can be said of this one-off programme, where the air force has allowed Bradbury to observe the recruitment process. How the producers must have kicked themselves when none of their chosen "characters" made it to the team.

[Bern Oulli]

Watched the Bader prog (well, actually watched both but with respect to the Sparrows, the Bader one was more interesting). It would appear that the most likely scenario was that Bader was on the wrong end of a friendly fire incident, not a collision at all. Well researched I thought.

[raytofclimb]

What a load of Hoop.

45 minutes worth of speculation, conjecture and tenuous historical records crammed into 2 hours.

Who knows what happened?

Let it lie.

[Human Factor]

Don't knock it. They did a great investigation a couple of years ago into who shot down von Richtofen and concluded it was a Tommy and a rifle. I think the Tommy may have been a Canadian. Not sure.

[beamer]

Two hours of Anoraks - yawn - then again I did sit through it - ouch !!!!!!!!!

[BattlerBritain]

I thought it was a fantastic bit of Research.

The programme was well presented, absorbing and the conclusion was very interesting.

Best programme I've seen in years.

[maxburner]

I agree, it was an interesting piece of research. What was an eye opener was the number of crashed WW2 ac within a few kilometers.

[possel]

I thought that it was a bit long, but the conclusion was most persuasive, especially as Bader was in POW camp with the guilty party (and probably worked out the truth for himself!).

What puzzles me still:

(1) the revelation that the Germans only lost one aircraft that day (which was well identified as done by someone else), so surely if it had been a collision, there would have been two? Why did no-one realise this earlier?

(2) Bader also claimed one destroyed that day (and the one that hit him as a probable!) which looks like a total invention, which was not even mentioned!

[ZH-127]

Don't knock it. They did a great investigation a couple of years ago into who shot down von Richtofen and concluded it was a Tommy and a rifle. I think the Tommy may have been a Canadian. Not sure.

Yup.. i saw that. It was very interesting and factual.

I also saw bits of the Bader programme, i was working at the time from home so only caught glimpses.. however i could hear it and it seemed to be interesting and bringing up some good points.

[Brian Abraham]

von Richtofen and concluded it was a Tommy and a rifle. I think the Tommy may have been a Canadian

The Tommy was an Oz.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_von_Richthofen