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The US were also based out of Goxhill, P-51s for escort and protection of the Humber!
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Originally Posted by cynicalint
(Post 9684699)
‘Objective Burma’ starring Errol Flynn. My Father always referred to it as ‘Errol Flynn winning the war in Burma single handedly’.
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Goxhill (USAAF Base No. 345) was Fighter Training Base.
From "The Airfields of Lincolnshire since 1912", Blake, Hodgson and Taylor - "Goxhill was established as a fighter training base to train pilots in the procedures they would need while operating in Europe, and the formal handover of the station [from the RAF] took place in August" [1942]...... "In late 1943 it was decided to form an independent unit to train all P-38 Lightning and North American P-51 pilots for both the 8th and 9th Air Forces. Designated the 496th Fighter Training Group...." M-62A3 |
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There's a reasonable amount of evidence to suggest that the decision to put a Merlin engine into the P-51 actually happened at the AFDU at the then RAF Duxford Edit: c/o Wikipedia In April 1942, the RAF's Air Fighting Development Unit (AFDU) tested the Mustang and found its performance inadequate at higher altitudes. As such, it was to be used to replace the P-40 in Army Cooperation Command squadrons, but the commanding officer was so impressed with its maneuverability and low-altitude speeds, he invited Ronnie Harker (from Rolls-Royce's Flight Test establishment) to fly it. Rolls-Royce engineers rapidly realized equipping the Mustang with a Merlin 61 engine with its two-speed two-stage supercharger would substantially improve performance. The company started converting five aircraft as the Mustang Mk X. Apart from the engine installation, which utilized custom-built engine mounts designed by Rolls-Royce and a standard 10 ft 9 in (3.28 m)-diameter four-bladed Rotol propeller from a Spitfire Mk IX,[16] the Mk X was a straightforward adaptation of the Mk I airframe, keeping the same radiator duct design. The Vice-Chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshal Sir Wilfrid R. Freeman, lobbied vociferously for Merlin-powered Mustangs, insisting two of the five experimental Mustang Xs be handed over to Carl Spaatz for trials and evaluation by the U.S. Eighth Air Force in Britain.[17] The high-altitude performance improvement was remarkable: the Mk X (serial number AM208) reached 433 mph (376 kn; 697 km/h) at 22,000 ft (6,700 m), and AL975 tested at an absolute ceiling of 40,600 ft (12,400 m).[18] |
Tom Hanks people at Thorpe Abbotts yesterday........... home of the 'Bloody Hundredth'
Just 'having a look, soaking up the atmosphere' - Not commitment to filming or production in UK. Arc |
Originally Posted by Martin the Martian
(Post 9685338)
Yes, a test pilot (whose name escapes me) who had been carrying out comparative trials between the Allison-engined Mustang and a Spitfire wrote a recommendation for a Merlin-engined Mustang, though the people at NAA had thought about it as well, and trial installations were carried out independently in the UK and the US.
Edit: c/o Wikipedia The old information office at Duxford (now converted to show the history of the station) was the old AFDU office. A lady popped in to visit us and when we asked if we could help she said 'yes you can show me where my old desk has gone!' She was secretary to OC AFDU at the time. OC AFDU's office was our 'back office' at the time.... |
Remember the Memphis Belle was shot at that fenland airfield in Lincolnshire
I remember looking out of my MQ window at Honington in 1987/88 IIRC, watching a cricket match when the "Belle" and a fighter escort flew low over the station sports field - it was surprisingly emotional. Honington ATC had provided ATC services for some of the filming and we often saw fighter contrails as they fought the "war" above Suffolk. |
What "U-571" and "Top Gun" weren't documentaries???? Next someone is going to tell me Captain America had no role in the battle against Hydra....;)
I imagine good things from any Spielberg/Hanks production.... |
S89, maybe our expectations were too high. I don't think we expected TG to be any more than Hollywood meets Heavy Metal and in the same vein as Blue Thunder and True Lies. For U571 I think expectations were more along the lines of a war drama. The Great Escape film was also fiction but included cameo scenes from other documented escape stories. U571 perhaps departed too far from its faction base for informed audiences.
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Wouldn't it be good if, they could make a film as good as 12 O'clock high with modern film techniques? Hey, today there are real flying 109's and 190's to get the authenticity of the enemy/sound done properly! :ok:
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Just been listening to Desert Island Discs with the military historian Sir Anthony Beevor. He said his wife refuses to watch war films with him because he is constantly "grinding his teeth" over the historical inaccuracies. He said a particularly bad example was Valkyrie, the film about the Hitler assassination plot, with Tom Cruise "saluting like a GI". He described the film as "dreadful"!
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The new TV series has already completed some scenes, including an hour-long sequence depicting the infamous Schweinfurt/Regensburg mission in August 1943 and focusing on the action inside two B-17s of the 100th Bomb Group.
Expect it to be along the lines of the opening of 'Saving Private Ryan' – i.e., more action than words. As far as I know, the name of the series has yet to be confirmed. 'The Mighty Eighth' was a term coined by British author Roger A Freeman in 1970 for his first book on the subject. |
Does anybody else remember We'll Meet Again from the early 1980s? All available on YouTube, with some nice flying from an unpainted Sally B and rather a lot of actors who went on to bigger things.
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Who remembers: "The Lives of a Bengal Lancer" (1935 film, saw it as a boy of 13-14. Very impressed). My Dad (an old soldier born in India) said the Army detail was mostly correct.
Was told that it was Hitler's favourite film (which is not much of a recommendation). Wiki has all the detail. D. |
There are plenty of stories, I was fortunate enough to be at the 70th Anniversary of Stansted Airport in 2013 when Lt. Edward William Horn, who was one of the first based pilots spoke.
in the space of 15 minutes he described being based at Stansted aged just 19, being sick and missing a mission in which his aircraft was shot down with no survivors being allocated another aircraft and crew and getting shot down over France his time at Stalag Luft III which started two months after the "great Escape" being force marched into Germany when Poland was liberated by the Russians Being bombed by Allied forces who thought they were German Infantry. Being liberated By General Patton. He was only 21 by this stage and had more stories than most people would have in a lifetime. 344th bomb group : Lt. Edward William Horn 344th BG 497th BS hearing him talk was a humbling experience and will be something that stays with me for the rest of my life. I would have thought the difficulty would be cramming all that into 10 episodes. |
'Masters of the Air' at Abingdon
It would appear that the former RAF Abingdon (Dalton Barracks) is being used for filming of the new Hanks/Spielberg-produced TV series Masters of the Air (or whatever it ends up being titled).
New structures include a period watch office, which will presumably replicate the OTU-spec tower at Thorpe Abbotts, where the series' subject unit, the 100th Bomb Group, operated from. Anyone near Abingdon got any more gen? |
The village of Bledlow is their current focus:
Eastern Daily Press Wikipedia tells us:Bledlow is a village in the civil parish of Bledlow-cum-Saunderton in Buckinghamshire, England. It is about 1 1⁄2 miles (2.4 km) WSW of Princes Risborough, and is on the county boundary with Oxfordshire. The toponym "Bledlow" is derived from Old English and means "Bledda's burial mound". A 10th century document records it as Bleddanhloew; the Domesday Book of 1086 records it as Bledelai. A more common derivation is from "Bled-Hlaw" meaning Bloody Hill which commemorates an undated battle between Saxons and Danes. |
Local rag just says some footpaths around the airfield/barracks are being closed for the rest of the year, and they are constructing at least one replica B-17.
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Thanks goldox. Realism seems to be an early casualty in the shooting: Norfolk's village direction/distance signs (Eastern Daily Press picture) would have been removed for the war's duration.
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