Kansan“Battle of Britain” Region 2 DVD
I keep reading about this region 2 release for the B of B, I’m assuming this is the one that has all the goodie extra’s. Does anyone know if it’ll be released in a format that we can play here in Canada? I just picked up the movie not to long ago but there are no extras.
Thanks Gerry
Gerry,
Amazon.co.uk summary for the European version.
Release Date: May 24, 2004
• Special Feature Information:
° Commentary – 1. Guy Hamilton – Director and crew
° Isolated Music Score
° Trailer: A BRIDGE TOO FAR Special Edition
° Documentary – 1. BATTLE FOR THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN (50 mins)
° Featurette – 1. AUTHENTICITY IN THE AIR
° 2. A FILM FOR THE FEW
° 3. RECOLLECTIONS OF AN R.A.F. SQUADRON LEADER
° Trailer
° Photo Gallery
• Available Audio Tracks: Dolby Digital 5.1
• Main Language: English
• Region 2 encoding (Europe, Japan, South Africa and the Middle East including Egypt).
• PAL, Special Edition
• Number of discs: 2
• ASIN: B0001P1BOI
• Catalogue Number: 10001024
It would be nice if someone in corporate-land would use this and also and remedy the truly execrable first pass at a Region 1 DVD release (see also the “Battle of Britain – The Remake” thread. There is a lot of moaning (and worse) on US Amazon about it. We can live in hope. The alternative is getting a tad p*ssed off at the suits and that tends to get us nowhere.
Time to send a few emails towards California I suppose…
Rob / Kansan
Kansan‘The Times’ of London, today 26 April, dedicates 1.2 complete pages to an obituary to Ezer Weizman, the President of Israel who died on 18 April.
A Sergeant Pilot in the RAF flying Spitfires in WWII,
FWIW Yup. My dad said he was in his group/cohort/whatever at 73 OTU at Fayid, Egypt in 1945. I understand that Egypt at that time might not have been a terribly hospitable place to be for someone who was instrumental in founding the state of Israel a little later.
Mark12, if you ever get a chance you should ask Stan Colley (qv in earlier thread) if he knew Weizman when he was at Fayid.
Rob / Kansan
KansanLlyn Dulyn C-47
Digressing a long way from the original thread, most of C-47 43-48473 still lies in Llyn Dulyn, Snowdonia, the reservoir for the town of Llandudno, I believe! Back in 1973, the tail section was recovered, the only stipulation from the Water Board being that the sub-aqua club involved did not use a powered boat. RAF Valley Mountain Rescue Team dislodged the wreckage from the cliff above the lake in 1949 because (very tough) kids were climbing up to it ……. The engines must be in the lake too but it is very deep, local legend being that it is bottomless!
IIRC I think I saw the fin in the Fort Perch Rock museum in New Brighton (is the museum still there? ) with a whole load of other items from other wrecks. Also touching on another thread, the lake is (a) said to be haunted with the ghosts of dead aircrew, and (b) like Lake Constance, the scene of a few crashes over the years, isn’t it? I think I remember seeing something about it on “Nationwide” many many years ago where some figure in flying kit was standing by the side of the lake. I think the haunted wrecks/snowdonia angle could merit a thread by itself. I expect it’s been here already.
Rob / Kansan
KansanThanks for the info…
They include a sketch of the Lanc’s remains at the link brewerjerry mentions … strangest looking Lanc you ever did see :rolleyes:
A Lanc which looks suspiciously like it was copied from someone’s Big Boys’ Book of the B-17. That’s quite a large chunk surviving. Thanks to you and brewerjerry for setting me straight with the URL. I am ashamed to say I didn’t try the root URL to see if the site was still there. Gnash.
Rob / Kansan
KansanAt least a couple of Lancasters…
Four or five years ago I collected some Lancaster URLs. One of these was for a German sub-aqua club (in Thuringia) had a link to the crash site of (they said) JA 973 “JO-O” of 463 Squadron, which crashed into a lake in the vicinity of Merseburg in January 1944 (I expect someone else here can verify this). They implied there may be another Lancaster in the same lake. The site now comes up as “404 datei nicht gefunden” – it was http://www.tthdf.de/flugzeug.html at the time. If anyone knows whether this group still has its page I’d be interested to know what it is now. Googling pulls up the same URL and the same 404s.
I seem to recall a French group pulling large chunks of Lancaster out of a lake in France too.
Rob / Kansan
KansanThanks for the info, Moggy.
R / K
KansanGoogled on “Purple Plain Mosquito” and found this…
http://www.home.gil.com.au/~bfillery/mossie06.htm
The Purple Plain. – 1955 [sic]
RAF- Gregory Peck; Burma Mosquito pilot crashes, walks back to civilization. Interesting view of rare WWII theatre, pilot fatigue, and the fact that many combat crew went down to accidents rather than enemy action.
Made using DH. Mosquito PR.Mk.34/one T.Mk.4 of 81 Squad, Seletar, Singapore on a base at Negombo, Ceylon. Avro Anson. N.A. Harvard in the background. One T.Mk.3 Mosquito was destroyed in the crash sequence. Camera plane was a Short Sunderland of 205 Squad!
Rob / Kansan
KansanMark,
No idea.
Are those external flanges and hinges? Reminds me of my old Mini. I asume therefore it’s not a swing-nose (swing fuselage) cargo version and is a film prop so that all those escape/burning crewman/model-spitfires-flying-on-cables-over-the-upper-gun-position shots from the BoB film could be made easily?
Rob / Kansan
KansanOops!
I started a thread on this very topic some time back. See it here
http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=37452&highlight=SchaffnerI had read about Martin Schaffner in the January 1995 issue of FlyPast, which had a large article with photos – including photos of the very complete Lancaster. He also pulled a Halifax out of a lake and scrapped it too I believe. Such a shame. I wish he’d either kept them intact or left them there for the future.
Dave –
Oops! You did, didn’t you?! My apologies – not trying to steal your thunder. That’ll teach me to make sure I read all 500+ pages of this stuff before posting anything!! 🙂 Maybe I’ll read the FAQ too, one day.
Thanks for the FlyPast reference. I hadn’t realised it was 10 years ago since I thought I’d read about it recently. – Just another sign of premature aging (what do I mean premature?!)
Rob / Kansan
KansanYou may have seen the film, now read the book…
Has anyone seen this world war II film and can give us his or her review, the film will be released on April 19th in the states on DVD. Found this review on the IMDB.com site. Gregg Peck in the lead role, but in no way could it top his performance is 12 O’Clock High ! A film with Mossie’s I am told !
Thanks !
BlueNoser352!
BN352 – You might want to have a look for the book too by H.E. Bates – according to Amazon USA you can get a copy for $0.01 (used!).
I recall that the Mosquitos etc. play a secondary role to Mr. Peck and the inner turmoil he’s going through, but if (like me) you’re also looking at all the wrong parts of the screen and trying to work out if the continuity people were awake it’s interesting enough. Not sure I’d pay top money for it but all kinds of things make the 2 for $11 bins at my Wal-Mart after a few weeks.
Also while we’re on the H.E Bates kick, see if you can find a copy of “The Stories of Flying Officer “X” – “First published under the pseudonym of Flying Officer X, H.E. Bates’ heroic stories of the exploits of British pilots during WWII created a sensation when they appeared in 1942” (according to amazon) – I read it when I was a kid and I liked it then. (!) Also “Fair stood the wind for France” which I must admit I never read but was supposed to be about a Wellington crew getting shot down over or crashlanding in France and how they coped – the BBC series about 20+ years ago used some Lancaster footage and disposed of the other two crew members by having them jump a lot earlier.
H.E Bates wasn’t all Pop and Ma Larkin and “The Darling Buds of May” – FWIW one of my relatives worked in the same office as H.E Bates years ago – he was a lawyer in Kent (England)
Rob / Kansan
KansanIt’s a BIG Lake…
Lake Constance is quite big and there were many aircraft that fell into it.
Martin
Wikipedia says:
Lake Constance (German Bodensee, also known as Schwäbisches Meer (informally) and sometimes written Lake of Constance) is a lake on the Rhine between Germany, Switzerland and Austria.
The freshwater lake sits at 395 m above sea level and is central Europe’s third largest, after Lake Balaton and Lake Geneva. It covers approximately 564 km² (220 mi²) total area. The greatest depth is 252 m in the middle of the eastern part (Obersee). Its volume is approximately 55 km³.
That’s Big! So a couple of B-17s, a Lancaster, a Halifax, a Mosquito and several others would fit in there quite comfortably. And freshwater so the preservation state would be fairly good. But over 700 feet at the deepest point.
Our glaciers in the mountais also still hold remains of many aircraft, i.e. Bf-109E-3, D-3801 Morane, C-3603, two USAAF C-47 Dakotas, P-51D……..
I could go on…….Martin
Please do, when you get the time. 🙂
KansanGlenn Miller’s “other story”
Did anyone here ever read at least one bizarre book (there may have been two) called “Millergate” which made some, ahem, odd allegations about Glenn Miller’s disappearance? They were written by a guy called Wilbur Wright (really! – he is/was a WWII RAF veteran if memory serves) in the late 80’s early 90’s. Real conspiracy theory stuff and totally at odds with the story protrayed in the film. There was supposed to be some person still alive who could prove all these allegations and the book ended with an invitation to buy the next volume (or bankroll it, I don’t remember) and find out the “truth”. I never did find out how it ended so I assume the second volume never materialised.
K
Here it is – found it in alibris.com I think this is long out of print but you can get it second hand if you have that kind of money.
Millergate: the Real Glenn Miller Story. by Wilbur Wright.
Publisher: Wrightway Publishing Ltd, Southampton, UK Date Published: 1990 ISBN: 0951254707
KansanWow again…
And here’s for the Lancaster….for the records: It was Lancaster III ND759 TL-R of No.35 (Pathfinder) Sqdn lost during the night of 27th/28th April 1944. The aircraft was raised from the lakebed of Lake Constance…where it resurfaced on 2nd May 1954 – eventually the aircraft was put on display on 17th June 1954 – but scrapped a few months later.
There were some photographs in Aeroplane Monthly June 1993 issue.
Martin
Martin – Double Wow!
So “Lonesome Polecat” and the Lancaster were both in Lake Constance! Did the other B-17s ditch there or were other lakes being dredged/cleared or something when this all happened?
Now – for those back numbers of Aeroplane Monthly.
Merci mille fois!
K
KansanWow!
De profundis clamavi ad te Domine (Out of the depths I have cried to thee O Lord – Psalm 129) – and these certainly came out of the depths. Pardon the quotation – seems apt.
Thank you so much, guys. Truly amazing pix and a truly remarkable forum. I thought there were two B-17s and here we are looking at pictures of three. *Did* anyone write a book/article about Herr Schaffner and his interesting hobby? That’d be interesting reading!
Thanks again,
Kansan
KansanAlcoholic B-26
Quite a few of us must have made an Airfix kit of a B-26 called “Mild and Bitter” many years ago?
Looking thro’ my copy of the B-17 nose art name directory it looks as if there was a B-17 called OXO (601 Sq, 398BG, serial 42-107080) but I wonder weather that refers to the stock cubes or a game of noughts-and-crosses (or tic-tac-toe).
K
Sign In
