Competition to fly Spitfire

[Ignition Override]

This might have happened a few years ago, but the History Int'l Channel (US) ran this show several times this Monday night. At Duxford, the lady (co-?)owner of the two-person Spitfire began with four pilots in the Tiger Moth, from which she selected two to train several hours on the Spitfire. Only having seen some excerpts, her goal was apparently to find out which of them could have been trained in 1940 with about five-eight hours of operational training, before being released for actual combat, as some pilots were! The program combined recent flying scenes of the two planes with interviews of pilots from Spitfire squadrons.

I had read and watched on a previous show about how some new Me-109 pilots were hurt just trying to take off or land with the 109's very narrow gear track, or whatever it is called.

[airborne_artist]

First broadcast in the UK on Channel 4 (channel4.com), who more recently have broadcast a sister - Bomber, which may be on its way to you.

[scroggs]

The lady was Carolyn Grace, who owns and displays the two seat Spitfire in memory of her late husband, Nick. She is very well known on the UK historic warbird circuit.

[Tarnished]

Thankfully I my opinion the programme saved itself by getting extensive archive footage and some great inteviews with the real heroes and not concentrating on the lads "competing" to fly the Spit.

You can't really recreate the pressures of war time training in an experiment in today's "safe" environment. Death and disaster were daily occurences then, not so now. The young lad who got to fly the Spit didn't actually land it from what I saw and he certainly was not going to face being shot at on his next trip.

Thankfully the programme makers realised this and didn't resort to the theatrical and dramatic voice overs that are so common on "reality" TV shows.

I enjoyed it for the new interviews and new archive footage.

T

[White Bear]

I agree for the most part with Tarnished, but I'm sure he would agree that there was some wonderful air to air footage shot of the 2 seat Spit and the Mk 9 Spit together in formation, and lovely shots of the 2 seater off the coast with white cliffs in the background. All very evocative for someone who has not seen them in many years. Oh yes, I turned up the sound as well.....
Looking forward to seeing 'Bomber', and the mighty Lancaster in action.
Regards,
W.B.