There is an old Intelligence rough assessment maxim when monitoring contemporary rival national claims during a period of air combat:
” Divide claimed kills by three: multiply admitted losses by two”.
Those who are interested might like to investigate the Battle of Britain, Six Day war and Falklands claims ,at the time and now , for further validation of this law. .
Ground losses, accidents and Blue-on-Blues, are also never properly accounted for at the time. For example, when the “Battle of Britain” is fully checked it is seen that the opposing sides total actual aircraft losses from all causes were almost exactly even. The losses of a RAF aircraft on the ground were substantial and not put into the early public proclamations.
I would politely suggest that the more recent combats being touted here are still rather too close to the present for open analysis.

Now for all those of you who have no lives of your own….. 🙂 ,
Norman -Macgregor Edwards will be displaying his knowledge of “US Military Aircraft of WW2” on MASTERMIND on Thursday 4th May. The programme is being screened on BBC2 at 8.30pm.

Without wishing to bore everybody (again), I am sure I saw, in the mid 60’s, a picture of a Rapide with “German” camouflaged upper decking ,with white fin and black cross patee used ,or intended to be used, in “The Blue Max” for filming. It was in one of the popular Brit mags -Aircraft Illlustrated or Air Pictorial at a guess. Memory plays tricks I know , however I did get involved in a discussion on the subject at the time…….
Perhaps it could have been intended to be for “rear seat” shots to emulate a Tiger Moth type replica with the heavy cameras of the day – only a suggestion. Also I think people are perhaps getting a little confused as to which replicas were used for what film. The Darling Lili “SE5″s were absolutely hideous ,as I recall those in TBM (Miles?) not too bad. Also what happened to the Rousseau “DVII”s? -they seemed to disappear soon after. Ray Hillbourne (a delightful man!) tried to reproduce Pfalz fuselage construction with his D III -allegedly it flexed a good bit more than the Tiger based one!!
Like a lot of films, it started off with big ideas: 60 odd replicas of the major types etc. and was going to be the new “Hell’s Angels” -the inspiration for many of the shots if you compare. Anyway , compared to its immediate successors it was a creditable effort for what it was and has stood the test of time well. With the “benefits” of CGI I doubt if we will see the same again.

Ref “portable dark rooms”. A clutch of ATRELs ( Air Transportable Reconnaissance Exploitation Laboratories) is hopefully going to be set up with the IWM at Duxford.

Hallelujah!

In addition to the Luciole(s) there is allegedly a very brief shot of the suitably adorned “german” upper surfaces of a Dragon Rapide camera ship – no I’ve never noticed it either!
P.S. Not all the replicas were based on other airframes.

Wasn’t there somebody a few years ago in the USA who hacked up a T6 as a flying representation of a P-64?

One cannot but agree Roger. The problem they seem to have is one of large object storage with good accessibility to the public. For years they were desperately seeking a suitable outstation which they lacked, hence Concorde 002 having to go to Yeovilton. Their plans at Wroughton some years back incidentally included examining the option of just conserving airliner fuselages. Doesn’t that ring a bell?