The first time I saw
High Flight was in 1968 on a small screen B&W TV at the De Parys Guest Housein Bedford, where a number of us were being accommodated during our Flying Scholarship course at Cranfield. Every so often we'd have to put a coin in the meter attached to the TV, which meant we missed parts of the film. But now I have a copy of High Flight on DVD, which is of much higher quality than the rather washed-out version showed on Talking Pictures TV yesterday. A pity that they didn't use a better copy.
'Section Officer Harvey' would have been about 18 when the film was made
, but was at RADA at the time.
If you watch the clip of the single seat Vampire taking off, it actually clips the grass before only just missing the camera crew. The low flying Provost shots were astonishing - imagine the nanny state allowing such things these days!