the point is that our legal system of the time was less than perfect !!

the only ones that ever know for sure are the murderer and victim

and niether of them can talk , ruling out further evidence

lets remember these were also the good old days when single pregnant women may have still been institutionalised in a mental institution for nothing else but being single and pregnant

some of the evidence would be rightly argued against in todays courts too

shifty once caught ……of course he was he was on the run
large boots , i’m no expert but going off previous army experience the QM had 3 sizes ( even if ten sizes ) that is 1 tenth of the army ( a phenomenal number of people at that time !! )

put all together yes it is a high probability but it still isn’t black or white

just because they made the decision to convict didn’t always mean it was a sound conviction !!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Evans

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Bentley

it is intrigueing that there is the feeling to jump on them as murderers but we have little evidence of each case !!

lets not forget it was wartime ( now i’m not saying this was the case ) but bear with me as my father gave me many cases where the outcome could have been so difrent !!

there were many cases were guys were serving and leading an exemplary service career abroad , these same guys came back to find thier girls had been playing away ( sometimes pregnant ) they weren’t as innocent times as is often portrayed

you first have to know the full story of each individual case not just one sides

before making a decision !!

and not forgetting that just sometimes it has to be looked into very carefully as it is not unkown for the law to get the wrong person

a more thourough look into is required before a delete them all attitude is braught forth

i don’t realy see the problem !! it hasn’t been one for 66yrs with the largest percentage of those that were involved

things like this are only seemingly becomming a problem with generations with no involvement through better communications

i lost both grandads at sea my father was ex RN and my mother served in the NAFFI

my personal feelings are , it was a long time ago now if previous more involved generations let it be why shouldn’t we

at the end of the day they paid thier price for thier wrong people are judging by thier wrong rather than what they may have done whilst serving

murders then as now have many other factors to them and often arn’t as clear cut as it would at first seem to be !!

not that i’m for or against just that they have been there for generations , why should we interfere now ??

the main thing we have to remmember is that in film making directors do what is visualy appealing for an audience ( often authenticity is sacrificed ).

plus for filming it was probably a prop (scuse the pun ) if many takes were being filmed with a film crew around the last thing you would want would be a live.

it may even have been a genuine but deactivated so possibly no internals with a prop either free to or made to spin

gordon brown driving an hillman imp pick up with rab c nesbit on the machine gun in the rear flying the saltaire flag !!

but wait a minuite arn’t most of our armoured divisions made up from scottish regiments already most comming from cavalry regiments like the royal scots greys etc !!

[QUOTE=J .

Still, I’m surprised that the UK would shoot down a red cross marked aircraft.[/QUOTE]

it has not been unknown throughout warfare german subs would sink british hospital ships in ww1 even though they were white clearly marked with a huge red cross and lit pretty much by floodlighting at night

it was found out recently that as well as bringing troops back they were in some instances bringing empty shell cases back to be re filled ( against the rules )

a wreck was dived recently for a tv programe and they did indeed find empty shell cases and recent history has proved it was indeed one of the practices that went on

one of the winding up lines at the end of the show said ” the u-boat captains faced a terrible decision of wether to sink these ships as they knew undoubtedly there were some of thier countrymen on board , at least now they will be happy in thier graves knowing they were right in thier suspissions !”

(Here might be a good time to point out that the RAF roundel looks like a target. Did the Luftwaffe ever send Whitehall a thank-you note?):diablo:

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yes !! very simmilar to the one we sent thanking them for the cross hairs !!