Battle of Britain Film (from 2009)

Welcome to the forum Andy.

Your first post suggests you were involved with the filming of Battle of Britain, if you have any memories or images from that time please feel free to post them here. 🙂

Septic.

Nighthawk2’s caption to the photo of Battle of Britain B25 N6578D is not quite correct. The fabric cover over the nose was not to protect from the sun, it was to protect the plexiglass hemisphere from getting covered in bugs on take-off and climb out.

That seems to agree with post no. 2:

Purely from memory istr that the B25 nose covering was left on for take off and climb out to protect against insect splatter on the nose,then ripped off in flight !

Battle of Britain B25

Nighthawk2’s caption to the photo of Battle of Britain B25 N6578D is not quite correct. The fabric cover over the nose was not to protect from the sun, it was to protect the plexiglass hemisphere from getting covered in bugs on take-off and climb out. It was pulled off at altitude by cords which can just be seen in the photo. The operation also required yawing and lowering of flaps to get the airflow off centre to allow the cover to come off. As far as I can remember that was the final version of many attempts to alleviate the problem. The sqashed bugs appeared on film as out of focus shadows. Given that much of the work the B25 did was filming 70mm front-projection backgrounds which were (if it had worked,another story) projected onto a screen around 120×40 feet the bug shadows were a big problem.

PS, I think ‘BlogApostille’ and his link may be a phishing troll. There’s no reason for such an irrelevent link I can see, and it looks like the post is a bald statement of data lifted from another site.

If BlogApostille is a real person, my apologies!

I must admit that one had me stumped as well… strange.!:confused:

Lots of talk of B25 camera ships! ie more than one. I thought there was only one B25 camera ship used in BOB:confused:

There was only one B-25 camera ship in the Battle of Britain film, ‘The Psychedelic Monster’ N65780, owned by John ‘Jeff’ Hawke. Since then there have been other film and filming B-25s in the UK.

PS, I think ‘BlogApostille’ and his link may be a phishing troll. There’s no reason for such an irrelevent link I can see, and it looks like the post is a bald statement of data lifted from another site.

If BlogApostille is a real person, my apologies!

Lots of talk of B25 camera ships! ie more than one. I thought there was only one B25 camera ship used in BOB:confused: The ones that were left in the UK were those used in Hanover Street wer’nt they??

Battle of Britain Film Duxford 10 Sep 1968

Most including guardroom, ops block, church, gun butts, hangars, runways, perimeter track, Technical and Domestic sites
History:Built as an RAF fighter base in 1918, twinned with nearby Fowlmere.
8 Sqn here 1919-20, then 2 FTS. Station enlarged between 1928 and 1932.
01/04/23, 19 Squadron formed here and were the first to receive the Mk1 Spitfire in 1938.Operational during the Battle of Britain, involved in the ‘Big Wing’ controversy. RAF Fighter Command Sqns operating here were: 19, 56, 66, 133, 181, 195, 222, 242, 264, 266, 310 312, 601, 609, 611, AFDU.

Thanks Nighthawk,

The early morning buchon shots are very evocative, keep them coming, their much appreciated.:)

Septic.

Battle of Britain Film, further scans

Enclosed some more shots from Duxford on 10th Sept 1968, one shows the hanger that was blown up in background, also some taxi shots with Buchons moving out for morning filming. The ground to air shot of the CASA 2-11D was taken from outside airfield at Debden, which was also used for filming. This was on 17 June 1968.

Nighthawk2

Second-last Buchon pic – [B]looks like a Spitfire XIX in the background, sans cowlings.

[/B]PM651.

Mark

I sold a set of these for my brother a few years ago for £50..:eek:

No idea what happened to mine.. AND I had all the Apollo ones 🙁

I have somewhere a photo of a Buchon in one of Duxfords hangars, taken during filming, that was involved in some sort of accident.. possibly a ground loop. If i can find it again i will post it.

Some pictures I took at Duxford in the summer of 68 whilst visiting (from an ROC camp at RAF Honington)

IIR the date was a couple of days after the hangar was blown up.

Second-last Buchon pic – looks like a Spitfire XIX in the background, sans cowlings.

The badly damaged Buchon may well have been the one which got damaged in a landing accident in Jersey when the aircraft behind caught up during a stream landing and removed the tail.

Hey, thats possible. This one got imho no tail?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sushidel/44082910/sizes/l/

Some pictures I took at Duxford in the summer of 68 whilst visiting (from an ROC camp at RAF Honington)

IIR the date was a couple of days after the hangar was blown up.

There are 15 superb images in this suite but you have to look for them.

The puzzle for me, on my desktop ‘save as’ it is 62Kb jpg, click on it and I get ‘403 Forbidden’ message. On my laptop however, click on the image and I get a terrific 5.25Mb bmp image for download.

The wonder and mystery of computers. 🙂

Mark

I remember this problem, I got the same many years ago (saving ebay pictures). You use the Internet Explorer? When I remember correctly, I have changed my browser to the Mozilla Firefox. This problem, and the security problems of the IE, where solved. 😉
Just try a free alternative browser like Firefox or Opera.

The badly damaged Buchon may well have been the one which got damaged in a landing accident in Jersey when the aircraft behind caught up during a stream landing and removed the tail.
Other posts mention B-25 camera ships which were abandoned in the UK.
N9089Z was abandoned at Biggin Hill and became part of the Historic Aircraft Mueum at Southend and as was previously stated is now at Booker.
N7614C was abandoned after filming a promo film for British Airways which involved air to air footage of a Boeing 747. At one point 7614C was sat at Shoreham and I think she then moved on to Luton before being recued by IWM Duxford around the mid 1970’s.
The above is from memory. I am pretty sure I have got the history of 7614C the right way round as I saw her on many occassions at Luton and fully expected her to be scrapped there. I was very pleased to see her rescued.

Re my two shots taken at Duxford during Battle of Britain film, I spent whole day on airfield and was given permission to shoot what ever I liked, providing kept out of the way of moving aircraft.
Sixteen Buchons on field, inc one badly damaged in hanger, two CASA 2-111inc one in hanger being worked on, some Proctors made up to be Ju-87Ds.
B-25J was flown by owner Jeff Hawk.

Will scan some more shots when possible and place on thread.

Nighthawk9

Those wonderful colour pix remind me of those bubble gum promo cards issued at the time of the film’s release. I still have my full set, plus some swaps !

I sold a set of these for my brother a few years ago for £50..:eek:

I wonder what happened to the ladders the lighting guys are sitting on, they’d be great for Legends. A real one upmanship over (literally) the chap that turns up every year with the umpires chair !