Wings Over The Navy…

Whoa! This is awful

Yikes

Photo 4

Photo 2

Hi Steve.

I’m in my third year of a BA in Screen and Media. Your topic sounds great, all those hous of watching old war films.

I’m doing a year-long directed study at the moment learning about documentary making techniques, and I have chosen to make a doco film about the social side of the RNZAF during the war. It’s fascinating discovering some of the stories. I’m including all types, not just pilots.

For example I interviewed one lady who was a WAAF technical librarian – sounds boring till you hear that she had a highly specialised and secret job and the aircraft of the RNZAF right across the country and the Pacific were dependent on her on a daily basis as to whether they could fly or not. She had some great social stories of barracks life and going to dances with the Americans (who regularly spiked girls drinks!!) etc. too. Her fiance was killed in a raid over Europe, and she later met and married another airman. Her Dad was also in the RNZAF, and he had been given the secret task that if the Japs invaded he had to blow up RNZAF Harewood (now Christchurch International Airport!)

It has also been a great excuse to film in a few aircraft museums too.

Which films are you concentrating on for the dissertation? Or are there too many to name?

I know one thing, even though I’ve been getting consistently high grades, I’m defiantely not going on to do Honours or Masters. I’m busting to get out into the real world again and earn some real money. Fingers crossed for next year.

And another thing, the original film by William Wyler does not actually strictly follow the Belle’s final mission either. Camera crews flew on several missions in several aircraft to get the footage. Some camera crews were even shot down and killed.

And a significant amount wasn’t even filmed in Europe because they had problems with the film they’d taken and it was no good. So pick-up shots were done with the Belle’s crew in the USA once they’d got home. I’m not even sure if they were in the real Belle for these shots but I assumethey were.

This is why it took a year before the film was released because they had such production problems. Most propaganda was banged out quickly.

It is a great film, but has as much a mix of fact and fiction as the 1990 version, which as we know was not based on the truth of the final mission at all.