Fighting The Blue

There was a programme on National Geographic at the same time about the Battle of Britain using original colour footage from the Battle. Caught it on +1

Brill series and very well made..wonder what happened to the outtakes from all the rest of those great 50’s , 60’s and 70’s films..prob dumped along with all the aircraft!

Ahhhh, that looks like the one I was thinking of!

“Fighting the Blue” and a three part series about the Battle of Britain that I would assume was made around the same time are both crammed with excellent outake footage from “Battle of Britain”, tons of it. Both are available from Acorn video. Their website address, www.acornmediauk.com.

There must be quite I lot and agree with everyone here. The first time I saw Fighting the Blue I watched it avidly but to begin with, was a little sceptical about the use of the footage but very quickly came around thought it complimented the documentary very well.

A good account of the making of the film (BoB) is Leonard Mossley’s bok of the same name – a paperback produced just after the film was released. One particularly interesting bit is the description of how the hangar at DX went for a burton. It actually took two goes to get it right. To maximise the effect of the explosion and the amount of explosive needed, huge water tanks were erected inside the doors, against which the charges were laid, which is why, from one angle when the hangar explodes, it looks like the Mohne Dam being breached. For the second take they upped the amount of bang material for a more dramatic effect. Another good article on the film is a two-parter in Warbirds Worldwide from the mid-80s. Some good info on the replicas used in there. Must dig them out some day.

To be honest, I thought a lot of the ex-BoB material used for Fighting the Blue was better than some of the footage which went into the final release of the actual BoB film itself, but that’s just a personal musing really!

Chris

When you consider that only 40 MINUTES or so of aerial footage is included in the film, against possibly dozens of hours flown….

I would say quite a lot!

Yes indeed-it makes one wonder how much footage survives from that movie as Dark Blue World used a lot, but Fighting the Blue showed even more!. I for one would buy a DVD showing all extant footage.

Was this doco mentioned in FP at some point? I can’t think of the title but it was definitely a BofB one.

Having watched the BLACK 6 section.

It gives a in depth look at the 22 years it took for restoration and the complex life BLACK 6 had.

All in all probably worth buying the DVD’s just for this……………….