TFC pulled 12 blades by hand on their B25 & I’ve pulled 12 on a 3350 (along with a few other people) It’s basically to check the engine won’t hydraulic lock on the starter & to squeeze any oil into the exhaust stacks so it ends up along the sides of the fuselage or all over the ramp instead of bending a rod or blowing a jug off.

You see, I was there, I made the documentary, I even pulled a prop through with everyone else and I still wondered why Paul in the right seat said that! You live and learn. I believe he’s actually counting the turns on the starter as opposed to hand turns I think, but had no idea what the counting was. Included it as it was a nice sequence.

Hi All,
Thanks for all the answers………:cool:

John Terrel:- I did wonder about that picture as when clicking the link to the CAF it just enlarges the picture, so I have edited the link to take you to the main CAF web site. I have emailed the CAF and the article source MPS News to query the picture so am awaiting a response for a definitive answer before I remove the picture and article link. Many thanks John for the info provided though…..:eagerness:

Geoff.

Nik Coleman, I’m the Director of the documentary. Thank you for your compliments expressed to the CAF about the programmes, sadly not expressed here. The Wing Leader of the CAF Centex group took time out of his day keeping the aircraft, veterans and public happy in Caen, where he’s understandably busy, to answer your enquiry about a single frame grab on an obscure website from months back.

Firstly, it’s a documentary series made to the best of our currently available knowledge for a general television viewing audience, it does not purport to be a definitive guide to restoring C-47s.

The use of the screen grab you show is nothing to do with us. It’s from an early promo cut and I believe the voiceover at that point in the actual documentary says ‘like so many others, in the boneyard at Basler’. Its clearly representative of the outside storage at Basler and we show, repeatedly, TAB as received in Basler in Vietnam replica paint scheme. That same sequence shows civil DC3s and a Super DC3.

The documentary first sight of TAB is in the hangar at Basler being stripped, thats where we saw her. The use of that image by whomever published it is erroneous but nothing to do with us.

Secondly a really good spot by you if that is a Japanese airfield being strafed (it may well be). The archive source had it listed as ‘US Aircraft strafing assorted targets in France and Belgium, June 1944’. I’ll have another look – whilst of course its important to you, and us, it is representative footage for the general viewing audience, so the less well informed viewer an understand what was going on. We have gone to great lengths to bring this story to the GENERAL PUBLIC, to further their understanding of this Great Crusade and to honour the fallen on all sides.

I’ll let you into other shocking secrets. (I’m smiling here). The jump at Dallas happened before the sequence of the plane leaving San Marcos, and the wings going on at Basler happened three times. We are telling a story to inform and sometimes we have to tweak things little.

Perhaps you’ll forgive us making a few seconds error in 320 hours of footage shot over three years and three countries, by me, and one other person, where a conventional production would have had a crew of 20. As you say, you may be nit picking – we all make mistakes even when information is right in front of us, and just 24 hours later we cant recall the real facts.

It even happens to contributors on this forum.

Nat Geo, the channel you say you saw it on, will be surprised to hear of these errors. Because it was on History Channel. You see, tiny errors are easy to make.

I love your enthusiasm and attention to detail and I’ll be happy to add you to our preview group in future but I think in honesty, though it is in your opinion flawed, we should be applauded for bringing this story to the masses rather than have the public endure ‘D-Days scariest ghosts’ or ‘Sex Guns and Sand – behind the D-Day headlines’ – the sort of fare being offered up elsewhere.

Kind regards,

Nik

Send me your email address to [email]nik@nikcoleman.com[/email] and I’ll send you a link to whet your appetite for Series 2. You are indeed right that decent so called ProSumer kit can produce great results if you know what you are doing in Post. Or, as we call it…. series two lol

Lmao. Hurricane there’s a great back story to. I was about to leave Peters house, and I was thinking, ‘hellfire I need a load of archive shots of India to make this work’ – and he then said ‘I dont suppose all my old home movies would be of use to you?”. Maurice and I are close friends, I spent a lot of time at his bedside when he was ‘asleep’ in hospital. Watching that ep is… hard… but, he’s in the new series…

Oh blush. We make the Plane Res series. You are very kind and we are about to release series two. It’s been successful so for series two we’ve gone, um… lol, slightly bigger. We visit with, and fly on: Avro Lancaster Just Jane (well we taxi with her), B17 Texas Raiders, B24 Diamond Lil (which immediately suffered a double engine fail and emergency landing, we didnt touch anything!), P51C Tuskegee (first flight after wheels up landing), B29 FiFi and B25 Miss Mitchell. You’ll spot all but the Lanc are CAF planes, we have the run of their fleet. It’s like being in heaven. Series 3 in pre production, expect to see S2 on PBS UK. You can buy S1 on Vimeo too.

I love the phrase “high quality cameras etc are not prohibitive in price. Even a £300 Go Pro will give you broadcast quality for action sequences.” You have no idea lol. I’m the tightest fisted Producer on earth. There’s one blow away sequence in the new series that will have you saying “OMFG – on board two ship!”. £72 Chinese camera lol. It pretty much wrecked it and admittedly we do take £20k of cameras with us, but we also have some incredible 4k footage from an iPhone. Thanks for all your support. If anyone would like to email me and ask nicely, I might just let you have access to one of the slightly rough full episode previews! Also find Plane Res and lost of extras on Facebook.

Yup.. lol odd!

Odd, it’s shown on PBS America on Sky in the UK….. but not actually shown on PBS in America…

Hi it’s Nik here, my little series and thank everyone for the praise.

You’re right. PBS America (UK) have picked it up, but PBS America, America, haven’t. One of those odd TV things.

Just heading off some potential feedback – in series 2 we’ll be pointing out that we try to tell the whole story of the people and the planes, so it’s not always a bolt by bolt rebuild and we don’t pretend it is. For instance the T6, Percival Q6 episodes are really about Leahs relationship with the Harvard, and the women who preceded her, and the crazy back story of the Q6 (spoiler warning) and DeGaulle, and then Rex Fords Dad. It’s a lot like talking to pilots we hope – one story leads to another.

Series 2 is being made now in the USA – B29, B24, B17, B25, P51C Tuskegee, P39, Corsair and more. So I’m a busy chap. Thanks everyone for your support.

Nik

Meanwhile… the rest of the video

….is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX9hVkTjOIs

Additional shots that were on the virtual cutting room floor, includes almost unedited takeoff climb etc, and some nice rorty Meriln sounds.

Enjoy,

Nik

Clarity needed

Hi Bruce,
Good points which I’ll try to answer.
Has for 521, pilots reported small pieces fluttering down like a silver cloud.
The Luftwaffe report clearly indicates the amount of damage and showes the serial number and I’ll post it here.
You are correct about the ‘new’ P-51Bs has they are 99.9999% new built.
Check out the Flug Werk site and see the P-51 assemblies offered and you’ll get an idea of what’s being done.
A number of firms in the US are doing even more.
http://www.flugwerk.com/p51.shtm

The fact that this German report says received makes me wonder if the a/c wreckage wasn’t recovered and smelted down and maybe a data plate was removed before that happened.
Has you say, it would be nice to know what they really did start with. It’s pretty quite out there though:eek:

With complete respect, and I don’t want to start a riot here, that’s not the original German report is it? It can’t be, it’s in English, so I assume it’s a translation after the event.

You want to know what ‘they’ started with? What I can tell you is that I was around shortly after the first pieces of Marinell arrived at Eye. No one can vouch for what happened between the crash and it’s ending up in a museum, but when it arrived with Maurice it was a big chunk of fuselage etc, with the data plate inside and intact.

He has hundreds of pictures but I don’t think he’s going to lower himself to this debate, and quite right too.

Your assertion about the registration is interesting. If it was D as opposed to B, how do you account for the following pic of D from the 339th themselves which seem not to show Marinell? There are more in the 339th Archive.

Sadly you clearly don’t know Maurice Hammond at all. If he wanted to scratch build a new Mustang he could and would, and wouldn’t have the slightest qualms about telling the world exactly what it is. No machine that’s sixty years old and has been substantially damaged is going to be original.

If you think Maurice is in the business of knocking up half baked fake engineering then you’d better talk to the community of Merlin Engined aircraft owners who trust his immaculate, Rolls Royce certified, better than new rebuilds to power their warbirds worldwide.

If, in a notional situation, Marinell had survived the war intact and then been put into use as a flying Museum piece, like the BBMF, what would have been replaced over 60 years? Engine swap, certainly, main spar, certainly, avionics, several times, u/c almost certainly, wheels, tyres, braking, hoses, leading edges, maybe a canopy along the way, wooden aerial, all strappings and parts made from organic materials that would expire corrode or rot, prop several times, cables several times, half a dozen paint jobs, hinges and pivots, every bearing on the plane, most screws and fastenings. Maybe the odd minor accident would have meant a panel replacement, then at say 50 years a total strip and rebuild?

While you’re about it, why not have a go at the BBMF Lancaster? That’s had a new main spar and is flying in non original colours…. as for the Vulcan…. oh and by the way I think Lewis Hamilton has had an engine swap and new bodywork on his McLaren, so if he wins the World Championship and McLaren plan to exhibit his car as original, you might want to put them right…..

I think you get the point. I hope you do.

Nik Coleman