Spitfire Ace - TV
 

A new series starting Monday 12th Jan 9:00 on Channel 4

quote: (From the Radio Times)

During WW2 the Spitfire and its pilots were vital to the Allies efforts t odefeat Hitlers Germany. Now, four young pilots compete for the chance to undergo the same operational training available to the BoB pilots - just 9 hours flying a Spitfire before being rushed to front line squadrons - and to find out what qualities these veterans possessed.

might be worth watching.....

I think there will be a lot of footage of Carolyn Grace's Spitfire, ML407, for this one.

Just going through the book at the moment - pretty good stuff!

Amusingly, a different "tabloid-style" TV listings mag I was thumbing through last night mistakenly gives the impression that WWII Spitfire pilots went from absolute ab initio to combat in Spitfires in 9 hours and that this is what the C4 programme sets out to emulate... well, not the combat bit obviously... :p

Another myth in the making...

The programme itself should make good viewing

You mean they aren't finishing up by using live ammo on the guinea-pigs? Shame! I'd get a telly for that. Maybe...
Cheers
James

"First Light" - by Geoff Wellum.

He makes a cracking good job of telling how it was really done. I think he had a total of 154 hours on Tiger Moths and Harvards before arriving on the squadron (aged 18 yrs 9 mths) with zero hours on Spitfire or any other aircraft. Flying is one thing, but the RAF did expect their fighter pilots to be able to navigate back to base once they'd finished shooting down Jerries.

They didn't expect him to fly in combat until he'd mastered the machine though - and they didn't have any two-seaters at the time either.

**************************
Through difficulties to the cinema

Plenty of re-used Battle of Britain movie footage, from what I gathered from the advert.

Pity the Real Aeroplane Company's Buchon wasn't flying when this was made - would have made proceedings much more interesting! ;)

I wish i'd heard about this earlier so that i could have applied to be in it!

Excellent program, especially the interviews with the likes of Geoffrey Wellum and others.

Nice to see Carolyn's machine flying, rather than with it's engine in bits like at the moment.

Most of the gun camera footage was new to me and very thought provoking.

Well done C4, more of this than any of that reality/Big Brother cr*p.

I thought it was a well presented program and I really enjoyed it. As for the interview with Geoffrey Wellum, I was surprised to hear him say that - during the battle - he had thoughts along the lines of "Do we really need to be doing this [fight & kill each other] in the 20th Century?"
He must have been quite a deep thinker to have such thoughts at such a young age and in such a desperate situation. Pleased to see him looking well though...
Am I right in thinking that Billy Drake has died since the making of this program?

Thoroughly enjoyed it - "well done Channel 4, home and tea, for once you deserve it!"

Nice to see Caroline talking about the aeroplane and Nick. Think she should be up for an OBE...

For those who are wondering, ML407 isn't the only two-seat Spitfire - there are four in this country, two of which are being rebuilt after accidents, plus at least two in the USA.

And perhaps Brendan has added to quotation folklore: "Make love to the sky, don't shag it!". Well, I hadn't heard that one before...

Watched it - with extreme jealousy

But some of that early gun camera film was extremely interesting -clearly the 8 x 303 armament being used and equally clearly a lot of ammunition being blasted off in the general direction of the enemy from way too far away

But the resemblance to my efforts on "Combat Flight Simulator" were quite startling - always either two firkin far away or two firkin close for comfort

two-seater Spits
 

There was something about this on the Key Publishing forums recently (in fact, might still be on-going)

The four UK-based two-seaters are:

MJ627 - M & P Bayliss, flown by Paul Day, East Kirkby, Lincs
ML407 - Carolyn Grace, Dufxord,
PT462 - Anthony Hodgson, Wales
PV202/IAC 161 - ARCo, Duxford (under rebuild)

US-based two-seaters:
MT818 (prototype MkVIII two-seater) - Jack Erickson, Oregon (I think)
MJ772 - Seattle Museum of Flight (again, I think) airworthy and with rear cockpit faired over
TE308 - Bill Greenwood, Colorado

astir8 - know what you mean! Get in close, hammer the ******s then get out, quick! ;)

Gun-cam footage was very haunting in my opinion - especially stuff like that.

What a wonderful experience!
I too am extremely jealous but I still think the women could have given the guys a run for their flying aces!
Margo

:D :p

Well I thought it was a little bland. Re-showing things we have all seen before. I felt they really draged it out the hour.

I would have liked some more depth into flying the moth and the spit. Yes it's nice to see them in motion. But there was no sense of how you fly them or their individual traits from a pilot point of view, this program was about pilots after all.

Now I know no-one is going to let you drill holes in their machines. But the in flight camera work could have been better. Having just returned from flying a T-6 (Harvard) in Florida, I was very impressed with their in flight videos, especially the one between you legs showing what you are really doing.

Have to agree with OD really.

I would like to have seen a bit more background leading to the selection (where did they get the poseur with the surf-bum hair and Wham stubble?) and a lot more of the early flying - especially debriefs.

However, interviews with the vets was really interesting and not the tabloid sensationalism I half-expected. Flying footage was fairly good, but not as good or as varied as it could have been.

All in all, interesting and looking promising, but clearly a programme on a budget - not enough crashes in it I suppose for a flying documentary.:rolleyes:

PP - I thought witchdoctor was referring to the awful C4 'documentary' on the Comet which presumably had a bigger budget because it could invent some 'sensational new information' about how the crashes were covered up.

Point taken. Benefit given - perhaps a doubtful choice of words.

I caught only the last twenty minutes, but that included enough interesting footage and interviews to persuade me to get in earlier next Monday evening, although I agree that there could have been more discussion/illustration of the aircraft's handling qualities from a pilot's point of view.

Note the usual passing reference: "oh, and there were some Hurricanes about as well". It's understandable that programs such as this present the traditional simplified version of the Battle as the victory of daring underdogs against fearful odds (including all those 110s referred to at one point, without mentioning that they were rubbish). Of course the Battle was all that, but also a victory of planning, organisation, leadership, technology and production (none of these factors in any way belittlling the achievements of the pilots) and the full story is no less interesting or stirring than the short version.

Most reality shows seem to look for punters whose main quality is an inability to cut up their own food, but the selection procedure here must have been somewhat more sophisticated. No doubt they were looking for blokes in their late teens/early twenties a la 1940, but if I'd seen the ad I'd have done the appropriate WW2 thing and lied like mad about my age. Drat, too late, and, oops, not so easy to lie about my obviously middle aged girth and ever multiplying chins.

The question is....who's going to get the 9 hours in the back seat?

Personally, on a very basic level, the magic of the machine just shone through as all the interviewees and the prospective pilots gave Both the Tiger and the Spitfire the thumbs up.

All those smiles......nuff saidjavascript:smilie(':ok:')

I agree there should have been a bit more about the current pilots flying the moths and spits.

One thing that always annoys me about flying on tv is the way they often show you a shot of the camera looking back at the guy whos flying so that you only get a glimpse of whats going on outside as it rushes behind them. I don't want to see some guys face, it'd be better if they showed you a shot looking through the windscreen so you got a pilot's eye view.

I am late teens/early twenties and I am extremely interested in the Second World War so I'm really annoyed I didn't hear about this earlier. Maybe they would have thought already flying Moths was cheating though.

Still a good program anyway.