Per Len Deighton (in his book “Fighter”), “… the most successful fighter pilot the RAF had put into the air…” was Sergeant pilot Josef Frantisek (later killed toward the end of the BoB).
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Big yes! Parks was also instrumental during the Bob, and – like Dowding – was the target of great jealousy. Can’t think of them without thinking of Justinian I and his treatment of one of the greatest generals ever… Belisarius.
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Ah, now this is far superior to “punch a Nazi”. But will they be able to get enough Bf109s for us to shoot them down?
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Interesting trivia concerning the film Battle of Britain (1969)
“Michael Caine initially thought he was too young to play a squadron leader. However, veterans of the battle told him he was actually too old for the part.” (from IMDB)*
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For values of “studied” equal to “heavy use of shot-for-shot imitation”.
Dambusters, 633 Squadron, etc. And then there’s all the Kurosawa stuff (Hidden Fortress) he imitated for the non-flying parts.
There’s barely a shot in the first movie that wasn’t “inspired” by previous work.
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Never saw the series, but read the books in high school and LOVED them. (I guess the series is based on just the one book, and the others aren’t actually a series but parallel narratives. Still.)
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Well, this just copied the Dambusters first. I sadly wasn’t able to find a clip of the complete attack.
Update, I did find this:
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“That’s impossible, even for a computer!” says the seasoned fighter pilot. “It’s not impossible, I used to bullseye womp-rats in my T-16 back home,” says the clueless farmboy who still hasn’t realized that he can do that because he’s an actual fucking wizard.
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Apparently the Polish pilots were fucking vicious
Once a German pilot had bailed out, the Brits considered him out of the game and allowed him to parachute safely to the ground. No so with the Poles; they would use them for target practice or just fly close enough that their slipstream collapsed the parachute and let them plummet
But then they’d seen what happens when Nazis march into your country
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I found the scene when they were riding along on bicycles practicing their radio procedures amusing.
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My dad took me to see this movie while passing through London in 1969. If I remember correctly, it had been showing continuously at the theater for over a year. A pretty big deal at the time. Imagine putting together those mock battles with no CGI and few remaining authentic aircraft.
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A reason to be filled with anticipation / worry:
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" Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
And for all the right wingers who idolize Churchill, remember: when he said “this was their finest hour” he wasn’t talking about a bunch of dudes in polo shirts holding tiki torches.
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Yeah, America has a great track record for beating Nazis, as long as its politically expedient to do so. Once the tide changes, we’re quite happy to let it slide, look at Vernor Von Braun, and operation paperclip.
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There’s a new movie out now with a similar emphasis on the RAF’s Polish pilots called “Hurricane.”
Leading man… Ramsey Boulton! (or Iwan Rheon as he prefers to be called.)
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Oh, yes. His “repeating” of others’ works is almost overshadowed by his SW repetitions of “I have a bad feeling about this”; to “it’s operational”; to deus ex machina situations where stopped vehicles always magically restart after being allowed to cool down (which, by the way, he did in THX1138). He is a man of many repetitions.
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