and, it must be said that nowadays most of the established ‘archives’ want to charge a FORTUNE for repro-rights – we know, we’ve looked into it – to give an indication, it’s $10s per second – and that’s not counting the cost of getting it digitised in the first place!

We have got the entire 19 hours worth of footage that William Wyler shot for his Memphis Belle movie – he was working as a Major (as was his staff) for FMPU USAAF, therefore that makes the material public domain, but the archive that has it wants to charge professional digitising and repro rights for anything other than personal use – We’ve spent the last two years trying to interest TV companies to work with us on it and are still ‘in negotiation’ but at the moment no-one seems interested, and – at over $70K – we cannot afford to do it ourselves!

It’s pristine colour, 18 hours worth I doubt has ever been seen before – apart from B-17s, it shows B-24s, the US Bond Tour, formation, take-off and landing shots… numerous UK bases in 1943, Cambridge, Royston, London… We’ve ID’d the aircraft, Groups and most of the locations… Sad to say – but it’s like a lot of the footage in Pathé, IWM and the RAFM – not gonna be seen in anything like the quality it deserves and by the people who would appreciate it!

Hi Graham
Don’t want to ‘take advantage’ of your knowledge of contents of Wyler footage, (I do really) – BUT do you recall any of the 92BG B-17E’s at Bovingdon, or indeed any shots of Bovingdon apart from those I’ve seen on the Memphis Belle DVD’s. — Or when the aircraft were with the 97BG.

Regards Dave & Mike
(15 years into research on Definitive History of Bovingdon – Station 112)
See thread ‘Bovingdon – Station 112’