If this is the film I think you’re talking about, I would say ‘dubious historical accuracy’ must be the greatest understatement used in the history of this forum.
This film is utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter crap.
It’s an insult to the pilots, ground crew and anyone else who served on either side during The Great War.
You won’t find a copy because they were all destroyed years ago on the grounds of taste.
Ask Melv about the likelyhood of being able to have a sh*g on the fuselage of a Fokker Triplane.
Although knowing Hiscock as I do he’s probably tried!
Take deep breath and count to 10, no make that 100!!!
I have more reason to hate this film than most, as GASML has already stated my father was killed durring the shooting of this film. It was a disaster from start to finish, there were several accidents durring filming and then one of the full size SE5 replica,s was lent to the production crew of “Zeppelin” that was being filmed at the same time, this had a mid air with the camera ship and all perished, including the aerial co,ordinater for “Von Richtofen and Brown. At this point as has been stated all insurance policy’s were frozen, the only way to make the insurance company happy was to remove some of the existing pilots and employ some that were acceptable to the insurane company, this ment pilots who were experianced in film flying and in particular flying these replica’s. My father and Derrek Piggot were called in, worse phone call we ever had!!! My father was killed flying an SE5a replica whilst filming some extra shots that the dirrector wanted just in case, the main film was allready in the can! As an aside the insurance was not up to date and my mother had to fight tooth and nail to get anything.
So as i said, i do not particularly like this film, i am interested to know that its available on Amazon though as i would like a copy for history’s sake, one day my son will want to know about his grandad.
In all of this you have to realise that these films are made to make a profit, the biggest market is in the USA and that is why the mojority of them are biased towards the Americans. They are also made for entertainment!, they are not and never claim to be historical documentry’s! they are for the 90% of film goers who would not know the diffrence between a SE5 and a Sopwith Camel or care! If you made for the 10% who do then it would probably be so borring that no one else would go and the money men would never finance another one!
I agree that its about time for a good WW! flying film, but you are never going to please the purists and also sell it to the masses! and somtimes somthing is better than nothing!
So next time you want to be critical of any film, flying or not, maybe you should have a little think about what price was paid to make it!
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