…another TV Doco?

‘The recovery of Buck Casson’s Gun Camera’.

Merk

The only way that could happen is if the aircraft had crashed in such a manner that the wing containing the camera had become embedded in the ground and not recovered, which is much less likely likely than for the fuselage.

Often I’ve thought that evaluating gun camera footage must have been the most disheartening of tasks; recognising what we know now to be the countless incidences of friendly fire, and knowing that you’d never be allowed to tell anyone what you’d seen.
Strange how we don’t see those people being interviewed in these “didn’t we do well in the war” documentaries…

ALL the indications were that this was Donald Bostock’s Spitfire (we’d have been surprised if it had turned out not to have been!) but it was recovered to “eliminate” the site as Bader’s. As it turned out, it was a nice story to weave into the programme. Remember: any TV documenary like this is, of necessity cut and edited. The viewer does not get the whole picture and, in this case, the whole picture was that we pretty much knew it was going to be Bostock’s machine from the outset.

Not least I suspect because with reference to the most likely crash site, one of the French witnesses clearly states “they just pulled it out”. This could not have gone un-noticed by the investigators/program makers. While it suggests a compelling explanation for why Bader’s machine has never been found, it just didn’t fit the story.
I suggest that the unusual configuration of Bader’s machine (immediately noticeable from its armament) would have made it of especial interest to German evaluators.