Replica Wellington – does anyone remember it?

Cheers Archer. I hadn’t noticed the undercarriage till you mentioned it – they certainly went to great lengths to make it right.

I wonder if anyone ever got coloured photos of it.

That realli is impressive. I wonder why the port wing is missing.

Actually, both wings are missing there! The top photo shows it being towed from the factory where it was converted to the airfield where filming took place. The wings were attached later.

The second photo also shows the other Li-2 that doubled as a C-47 in the movie. Also evident from this photo is the shortened undercarriage on the ‘Wellington’ which gave it the correct ground angle.

Wow, thanks Archer. That realli is impressive. I wonder why the port wing is missing.

What a shame it appartently no longer exists. It shows how an impressive replica could be constucted for film or musuem purposes though – I doubt they’d have had a massive budget for itin those days but the results are stunning. Thanks again.

That’s the one I remember seeing – looking at that fuselage-only view, it’s bloody impressive when you consider it!

Found the article:

Aahh, I’ll see if I can dig that one out of my basement sometime this weekend! Unless someone else beats me to the scanner of course 😉

By complete coincidence, I came across the Aeroplane Monthly edition with the article on the Li-2-Wellington. November 2001 (P-40 on the cover).

Thanks Ant. Gosh, it really sounds like they went all out for realism, actually destroying hte plane. Shame. The Li2 was obviously old and clapped out, having just left a long career, but think of those lovely new turrets burning up.

I have been thinking, I wonder with today’s modern materials such as carbon fibre, could a similar skin be created around a C47 that would be aesthetically looking like a Wellengton but also light enough to actually fly? I don’t know how it would go for aerodynamics, but C47’s have been known to fly with more than half a wing missing, so perhaps an added skin won’t make it too unstable. Imagine, if we never saw a real Wellington in the air again, at least a lookalike might be worth it.

IIRC,it was a full blown cinematic film,rather than just a TV movie. It included a crash-landing scene at the end,which unfortunately entailed taxying the ‘Wellington’ at high speed and then retracting the undercart to simulate a belly landing. It was then intentionally set alight! All that work and it just ended up going up in smoke,not sure I could’ve stomached it if I’d been one of those who worked on it!
I’ve got the AE article somewhere here,so i’ll post again later when I’ve dug it out…

Thanks everyone. It must have been in Air Enthusiast I saw it because Dad did have a set of them – the other collection of mags he had I recall now were Aero Modeller, not Aero Monthly. It was in the latter I recall reading a great two part article about the planes used in the making of Wings, the 1970’s WWI BBC series. They used full size flying replicas of the BE2c, Eindekker and Dr1, and also large r/c models made by David Boddington. But thats another story.

If anyone can come up with a scan of the AE article I’d love to see it please.
Or any photos of the Li2 Wellington would be fantastic.

Was it a cinematic film or a TV movie?

I wonder if they used a real Liberator too? Would there have been one available in Czechoslovakia then?

Cheers
Dave

True James, but its only AM mags in my collection though 😉

Have a look at the page Dave put the link to. It’s got the date of the AE article, among other answers being speculated about… 😉

It was in one of Aeroplane’s “Database” features, I’m sure, and I can remember there being a detail view of the slots in the fuselage. So, hopefully that ties down how recent it was, ie at least the past five years.

Yep, that’s the one (movie that is). I was going to say that I’ve also seen this Lisunov in Aeroplane Monthly a while ago. I haven’t got a clue which one it was though but I might have a quick look one of these days. I’ll scan the photos if I find it.

Edit: Looks like I started this message about four or five postings ago! 😮 My work must be getting in the way again 😉

Air Entusiast, 1972 or 1973. The aircraft involved was a Czech AF Lisunov Li-2 Cab, s/n 2204 or 2208. From memory, the article was two or three pages long, and contained several photos of the Li-2/Wellington in question.

Regards,

Jan

The Air Enthusiast article is quite comprehensive and has a few pics. Worth searching out. Dunno if it would have been safe to fly though!

Dave, I’m pretty sure the A*roplane Monthly article had a photo. Might be able to look it out for you.

I think this aircraft features in Zdenek Hurt’s book about the Wellington. It may not have been published yet.

I seem to recall him telling me this conversion was for a Czech film or TV programme of about 20 odd years ago.

From the photos I saw it was pretty convincing although the wing looked on the low set side.

I don’t think it was a flying conversion.

Mark

That’s the one, Dave!

Here’s the IMDb page for this film.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0127043/

I note it was black and white. It has a high rating on IMDb. Has anyone here seen it? Or got photos of the planes?