Creaking Door…an Auster used to spot for the fall of shot for a couple of Battleships, around the D Day period.
Is that after the RAF heavy bombers had knocked-out the costal artillery so that the battleships could approach the coast? :diablo:
Like you say…..it’s the size of your back-up that counts! 😉
Creaking Door…I just wanted to restart this topic after having seen the pics of the Short 184…
Why not manufacture the missing pieces of the Short 184?
Wouldn’t it be possible to ‘align’ new-build wings, undercarriage and tail to the existing Short 184 without destroying any of the originality? The new structure could be left without its fabric covering so that it did not ‘overpower’ the original structure.
I suppose drawings may be the problem.
Creaking DoorHere we have men and women whose courage cannot be questioned who are prepared to fight, and if necessary die, in the defence of their Countries. It is the responsibility of their respective Governments to husband those lives.
Well said!
Creaking DoorHere we have men and women whose courage cannot be questioned who are prepared to fight, and if necessary die, in the defence of their Countries. It is the responsibility of their respective Governments to husband those lives.
Well said!
Creaking DoorAlso, when news got back to Sagan (and, presumably, spread to other camps) about the murders did it have any effect on subsequent escape plans?
According to Paul Brickhill’s book all escape attempts at Sagan were temporarily stopped although work on the fourth tunnel ‘George’ continued. Following the news of the executions the camp guards were wary of any possibility of unrest and there were several instances of guards shooting at prisoners. In another Sagan compound a guard shot and killed an American sergeant ‘standing innocently in the doorway of his hut’.
Eventually, after much pleading, ‘a Scot named McCulloch’ was allowed by the reformed X organisation to attempt an escape. He was quickly recaptured and returned to the compound.
The very real concern for the remaining POW was that there may be orders to ‘liquidate’ the camps as the war was clearly going badly for Germany. All prisoners were organised into a camp self-defence force called the Klim Klub.
Creaking Door…I’m off to bed.
Ah…..Spitfire Vb EN830! 😉
Creaking DoorAnd the two American characters, Garner and McQueen, were as I understand it totally fictional. Are real British or Commonwealth characters not interesting enough to make as the lead rather than some faked Yanks?
Certainly there were fictional elements and amalgamations of real people but there were several Americans that featured prominently in the tunnelling plan some of whom were transferred to another compound that opened at Sagan before the fateful escape.
Possibly the problem was not one of nationality of escaper but of nationality of suitable actors; remember the awful ‘Australian’ accent of James Coburn?
Creaking Door…does anybody know where the victims ashes were buried (there was a memorial in the closing shots but it didn’t say where)?
The urns containing the ashes were returned to the camp at Sagan and the prisoners were allowed to construct a memorial with stone and cement supplied by the Germans. Possibly that memorial stands to this day; Sagan is now in Poland.
It is interesting that after ordering the murder of the escapees no attempt was made to cover-up the crime at the time, only later did those involved try to cover their tracks.
Creaking Door…the new guy, whom I’d never heard of…
It was Brendan Gleeson, who I have a lot of respect for as an actor (as opposed to many today who are celebrities first and actors second). I must admit I was surprised at the choice of Gleeson to play Churchill, especially as he is from Dublin.
I’ve yet to watch ‘Into the Storm’.
Creaking Door…a bit too much time spent retelling the story and dramatising the captures, too little time on all the men that needed tracking down after the war and disposing of.
I suppose the program makers feared that the RAF investigation wouldn’t interest as many people as the escape itself. Possibly even they feared that some wouldn’t know anything about ‘the Great Escape’ although it is hard to believe as the film is so well known…
…but having said that would today’s teenagers be interested in a film made nearly fifty years ago?
I did think it was quite brave of the program makers to interview the families of the convicted and to suggest that the ‘I was only obeying orders’ defence had (and has) some merit and that the Germans put in that position had little choice but to carry out the executions. Certainly most of those ultimately responsible for the murders escaped justice for this crime but some of those punished for it seem (to me anyway) to have been treated vindictively by the RAF.
Creaking Dooryours.
A few moments later the access hatch opened and five men walked out of the aircraft’s interior. A crash wagon drove up to take the injured men to the mess. Four corpsmen went into the Halifax and dragged out the two other crewmembers, well, they looked more like lumps of blackened flesh with flecks of red. Both were put on stretchers, with blankets put over their heads. It didn’t bother me y‘know, you get used to it after a while. I’ve seen worse, I remember one time a navigator had his upper torso sliced in two, the poor ******* was still alive. I decided that I couldn’t sleep so I got up and had a shower, then I got dressed. It was about a quarter to six when I got into the mess.
Mine.
As the ambulance screeched to a halt beside the aircraft, the access hatch dropped down and five tired weary men clambered out. The Ambulance crew briefly spoke to the pilot, then scurried inside the plane, later to gingerly emerge with the other two crew members who were past all help, they were placed on stretchers and their battered and blackened bodies covered with blankets. I thought to myself at least they are out of it, not like some others I have seen nearly cut in half but still alive.
Mine. 😮
Engines cut, the Halifax rolled to a stop and stood in agonizing silence. Nobody emerged but presently the station ambulance rumbled across the grass towards it. Were they all dead? Minutes passed then suddenly something and somebody fell from the belly-hatch onto the grass. No; not all of them dead. A minute more and the crew were standing over the two bundles gently carried and laid on the damp concrete. The ambulance crew stood and watched too, unwilling or unable to intrude on the final pathetic moments of the last operation this crew would ever take together.
Judging by how long it took me to rewrite that brief passage I can safely say I’ll never write a book!
Creaking Dooryours.
A few moments later the access hatch opened and five men walked out of the aircraft’s interior. A crash wagon drove up to take the injured men to the mess. Four corpsmen went into the Halifax and dragged out the two other crewmembers, well, they looked more like lumps of blackened flesh with flecks of red. Both were put on stretchers, with blankets put over their heads. It didn’t bother me y‘know, you get used to it after a while. I’ve seen worse, I remember one time a navigator had his upper torso sliced in two, the poor ******* was still alive. I decided that I couldn’t sleep so I got up and had a shower, then I got dressed. It was about a quarter to six when I got into the mess.
Mine.
As the ambulance screeched to a halt beside the aircraft, the access hatch dropped down and five tired weary men clambered out. The Ambulance crew briefly spoke to the pilot, then scurried inside the plane, later to gingerly emerge with the other two crew members who were past all help, they were placed on stretchers and their battered and blackened bodies covered with blankets. I thought to myself at least they are out of it, not like some others I have seen nearly cut in half but still alive.
Mine. 😮
Engines cut, the Halifax rolled to a stop and stood in agonizing silence. Nobody emerged but presently the station ambulance rumbled across the grass towards it. Were they all dead? Minutes passed then suddenly something and somebody fell from the belly-hatch onto the grass. No; not all of them dead. A minute more and the crew were standing over the two bundles gently carried and laid on the damp concrete. The ambulance crew stood and watched too, unwilling or unable to intrude on the final pathetic moments of the last operation this crew would ever take together.
Judging by how long it took me to rewrite that brief passage I can safely say I’ll never write a book!
Creaking DoorI haven’t read much of the RAF Bodney story yet but I have read enough to echo what others have said; and that is that your main weakness is in your historical research. For example:
“Each time we circled the airfield we would add about twenty feet in height. When all three flights had formed up we were already up at 10,000 feet.”
And presumably having orbited the airfield 500 times?
I also noticed that during one of the air-combats that ‘you’ in your P-47 hear one of the B-24 gunners say “five chutes”; how exactly?
At another point in the story you talk about putting on a seatbelt in a pre-war car; seatbelts, even lap-belts were virtually unheard of in cars until the 1950s.
Another thing that I found strange was the mixture of fiction and factual, almost documentary, detail such as in this passage:
“I walked past the pub, called The Smock mill. It was a small local where the entire population of the village turned up on a Saturday for the quiz. I walked on, past the real windmill (actually it‘s called Bodney Smock Mill, it was built in 1781). The mill itself had four patent sails (these sails had shutters on them) a white cap and fantail. The tower structure was built with wood (post mills are small and have brick bases, tower mills are the tallest and made entirely of brick).”
Do you see what I mean? Is this war-fiction or a study of windmill design?
Also, did they really have ‘pub quizzes’ during the war?
Sorry if this sounds too critical but if you are serious about writing these are the sort of things that you must get right.
Creaking DoorI haven’t read much of the RAF Bodney story yet but I have read enough to echo what others have said; and that is that your main weakness is in your historical research. For example:
“Each time we circled the airfield we would add about twenty feet in height. When all three flights had formed up we were already up at 10,000 feet.”
And presumably having orbited the airfield 500 times?
I also noticed that during one of the air-combats that ‘you’ in your P-47 hear one of the B-24 gunners say “five chutes”; how exactly?
At another point in the story you talk about putting on a seatbelt in a pre-war car; seatbelts, even lap-belts were virtually unheard of in cars until the 1950s.
Another thing that I found strange was the mixture of fiction and factual, almost documentary, detail such as in this passage:
“I walked past the pub, called The Smock mill. It was a small local where the entire population of the village turned up on a Saturday for the quiz. I walked on, past the real windmill (actually it‘s called Bodney Smock Mill, it was built in 1781). The mill itself had four patent sails (these sails had shutters on them) a white cap and fantail. The tower structure was built with wood (post mills are small and have brick bases, tower mills are the tallest and made entirely of brick).”
Do you see what I mean? Is this war-fiction or a study of windmill design?
Also, did they really have ‘pub quizzes’ during the war?
Sorry if this sounds too critical but if you are serious about writing these are the sort of things that you must get right.
Creaking DoorGetting a ‘deal’ on short-stay airport parking only to find the ticket barrier wanted to charge me £227 for a pre-paid ticket!
After backing-out of the queue (which no doubt made other people swear) and on walking back to the terminal, to confront parking company personnel, being told that I was supposed to press the ‘cancel’ button and then press the intercom to give them my booking number! 😡
Oh, and don’t put your credit-card in as you’ll be charged for the full amount. :rolleyes:
Well it would have been nice if you F^<%!#& told me that somewhere in the reams of (mainly blank) paper I (fortunately) printed-off when I booked the parking! 😡
[/RANT] 😀
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