I’m surprised no-one has mentioned this, some interesting footage and first hand accounts from both sides on the invasion of Port Said 50 years ago.
Firstly 3 Para jumping out of Hastings transports complete with invasion stripes, alongside the canal, then colour film of the French paras jumping from Nord Noratlases.
Most interesting was the amature colour film taken on board one of the RN carriers showing the Royal Marine commandoes flying off in what I presume were Whirlwinds painted in a variety of schemes and sporting huge crudely painted letters on their sides.
Were any of these shot down as it looked and sounded a like pretty hairy operation to me.
Saddest of all were the eyewitness accounts of an act of friendly fire when a Westland Wyvern from one of the carriers accidentally shot up a group of marines advancing along the sea front, they were lucky to ecape with only one killed.
All in all it was a pretty harrowing story told by those who were there, both Egyptian and British, I didn’t realise that the British forces operated such a rigorous shoot to kill policy, it looked horrendous, did I hear right, final casualty figures, Anglo-French 25 killed, Egyptian 6000 killed.
I was intrigued to see a couple of famous characters in there, Omar Sharif who was given a rifle and told to shoot at the advancing troops out of his flat window, he refused on the grounds that apart from being a poor shot anyway his chances of survival against the British would have been nil.
Michael Parkinson, an army captain at the time who’s jeep got surrounded by Egyptians with superior fire power. When one jumped on the roof, we were about to be spared the Parky Show for ever and a day, when his driver jumped out and shouted ‘Oi, get off that f#####g roof, I’ve just cleaned it’
Brave man, it worked!
By: Eric Mc - 31st October 2006 at 18:20
I saw the 1st and 3rd of these programmes and put them in the “pretty good” category. As has been said, nice footage of the British aircraft. The colour shots of the Whirlwinds were very interesting and revealed some surprisingly garish colour schemes. One Whirlwind looked like it was in a yellow/cream and red scheme!
By: XN923 - 31st October 2006 at 17:17
Mrs Thatcher decides to take back the Falklands (hurrah)
Mr Eden decides to take back the Suez Canal (Boo)
Discuss
Personally I think both decisions were correct but for different reasons.
One final point, I think the Egyptian casualties were 600 not 6000 but high enough anyway.
Careful with that can, those worms will get everywhere.
Some fairly different issues at stake really. Little time though I have for Thatcher, at least she did not conspire secretly with an ally to invade another country, basically for business interests. It’s also a bit too easy to blame Eden for the downfall of the British Empire, though I think the writing was on the wall anyway.
With 20/20 hindsight, one can see how things might have turned out differently with different handling during, before and after Suez but the people acting at the time didn’t have that luxury. I suppose if Britain hadn’t tried to do something to stand up to Nasser, the country would have seemed to be pretty well emasculated anyway so it really was a last throw of the dice.
I think there are a fair few people who would put the Falklands in the ‘boo’ camp as well though now you mention it.
On the plus side we had Wyverns at Suez and SHARs at the Falklands so hurrah! on both those fantastic aircraft and not a word more about the politics.
By: ozplane - 31st October 2006 at 16:56
Mrs Thatcher decides to take back the Falklands (hurrah)
Mr Eden decides to take back the Suez Canal (Boo)
Discuss
Personally I think both decisions were correct but for different reasons.
One final point, I think the Egyptian casualties were 600 not 6000 but high enough anyway.
By: XN923 - 31st October 2006 at 15:35
The footage of the hardware used in the last episode (Hastings, Noratlas, Wyvern, Sea Hawk) etc was terrific (although I don’t remember a Wyvern being mentioned specifically as the ‘friendly fire’ perpretator – didn’s he just say a ‘British plane’??)
No mention of the type was made (I think it said ‘British fighter’) but they intercut this with the Wyvern footage (takakakaka! zoooooom! Wyvern flies overhead with flaps and undercart extended) giving the impression. Statistically at least it was more likely to have been a Sea Hawk or Sea Venom.
We didn’t aquire the soubriquet ‘Perfidious Albion’ for nothing……………….
Ken
Never a truer word.
By: Flanker_man - 31st October 2006 at 12:52
I watched all 3 episodes – and good television it was too.
Very balanced – with commentaries from all sides.
I don’t usually like ‘drama documentaries’ – with actors playing the roles of Eden, Nasser, Eisenhower etc – but in this case it was well interspersed with eyewitness accounts and the recollections of key players on all five sides (UK, US, France, Israel & Egypt)
The footage of the hardware used in the last episode (Hastings, Noratlas, Wyvern, Sea Hawk) etc was terrific (although I don’t remember a Wyvern being mentioned specifically as the ‘friendly fire’ perpretator – didn’s he just say a ‘British plane’??)
The fact that he lost a leg as a consequence – yet bore no malice towards the unknown pilot was very moving.
The comments from the paras was also interesting – one saying that they had to have a ‘take no prisoners’ policy – they didn’t have the manpower to deal with prisoners.
Another para told how he was disgusted by the brutality of his colleagues – but was told to ‘shut the f**k up’.
The parallels drawn between 1956 and now was well made (a British Prime minister taking a reluctant nation into a middle east country etc) – as were the lessons drawn on the consequencies of Britains demise as a first league player and the rise of Arab nationalism that followed.
There is a short article on the BBC News site about the ‘betrayal’ of Eden by Eisenhower :- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6085264.stm
There is also a documentary on BBC4 at 21:00 called ‘The Other Side of Suez’ :- http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/listings/programme.shtml?day=today&filename=20061031/20061031_2100_4544_19171_60
I thoroughly enjoyed the programmes – but felt a little uneasy about the duplicitous way in which we started the ‘invasion’ – and what this country did in ‘my’ name.
We didn’t aquire the soubriquet ‘Perfidious Albion’ for nothing……………….
Ken
PS – I remember as a 10 year old in 1957 sailing through the newly-re-opened Suez canal in a troopship bound for Hong Kong.
You could still see the masts & funnels of the many ships that were sunk in the approaches to the canal.
By: XN923 - 31st October 2006 at 12:38
Interesting programme alright, even if it did suffer from the modern documentary maker’s blight, the need to ‘dramatically reconstruct’. I wouldn’t have complained if there had been a bit less of James Fox looking pensive and more of that superb Wyvern launching and in flight footage. The sound of those contra-props sent a shiver down the spine even on that little bit of voiced over film.
Most of the footage was very well chosen, though some was a bit stitched together. E.g. ‘Israel only had world war two era piston engined aircraft until France sold her fifty Mirage jets’ (cue some library footage of Israeli Mirages from various angles then, oops, some Meteor F8s) but nowhere near ‘Midway’ levels of inappropriate footage.
Did quite well to explain the background as well in the previous two programmes, though the fact they were trying to draw comparisons with Iraq was maybe a bit obvious.
Can we see more of that Wyvern film please?
By: Phantom Phixer - 31st October 2006 at 11:57
Never even registered in the Radar. Another good programme missed. If your interested in Suez, Model Aircraft Monthly Magazine November issue features some brilliant articles and pictures of aircraft that took part in the conflict.
Also a lovely two page article on the Midland Air Museums genuine Suez Veteran Sea Hawk provided by yours truly. Well worth checking out even if only for our Sea Hawk.
Or better still come and sea (sorry couldnt resist the pun) her for yourselves. She is a stunner with the yellow and black stripes.
Sign In
October 31, 2006 at 11:48 am