Judging by summer tours by the English cricket side and their very cheerful fans who tour with them, I thought the English national anthem was “Barmy Army!! Barmy Army!!!” repeated over and over ad nausium.

You could always try the evergreen favourite, “Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Hitler?”

Something most people don’t know is God Save the Queen is New Zealand’s official National Anthem too. We have two National Anthems. Our more commonly heard one these days is God Defend New Zealand, which was adopted as National Hymn in 1940 but seldom used till the 1970’s when we were winning golds at the Olympics and everyone asked why NZ was playing the British anthem. So it started to get played at sporting events and then was adopted as the second anthem. God Save The Queen is still used at state events and by the military, etc. Most kiwis nowadays have no idea that GSTQ is our anthem.

Peter, congratulations on 50 years of up close and personal with Spitfires. That’s an achievemnet. I wonder if you have lost count of how many you’ve been that close to since.

Sorry to hear about your mate, John.

Since the Tuskegee Airman film is fairly new and an excellent film well worth watching, I wonder how Lucas’ film will be different?

I liked the film too, but don’t know much about the real story behind it. There are a lot of people on a WIX thread about this same subject who’d disagree with it being excellent and some say there’s just too much made up for Hollywood. Lucas has made similar remarks apparently and plans to make it more accurate.

Bigger budget, bigger stars, more CGI?

Bigger stars? Apart from perhaps Denzel Washington who’s way too old, could you get bigger black American stars than Laurence Fishburne, Courtney Vance, or Cuba Gooding Junior? Even Malcolm Jamal Warner was excellent in the film and I usually hate his work. And as for supporting cast, John Lithgow is pretty big too.

I saw Speilberg on TV the other day talking about Saving Private Ryan and he said it was to honor his dad and the other WWII vets. But his dad asked when he’d make a film about his B-24 unit in the Pacific…or the guys flying the “Hump”.
I’d like to see those.
Good to know Speilberg knows that those stories are waiting to be told.

I hope his Dad insists on a Pacific aviation film. I’m really looking forward to his currently-being-made mini series The Pacific. I hope there might be some aviation in that, even if fleeting glimpse.

As for CGI aircraft, sure real ones would be preferable but perhaps these days they might be able to make them better than ever before. Look at the aircraft in King Kong a couple of years ago, I thought they were pretty superb, as was the entire cgi in that film. By now Lucas should have caught up to, if not overtaken that technology. And Dambusters will have CGI too, which will look better than the models used in the original I’m certain.

[QUOTE=’D-Day’;1256631]I have always understood that Johnnie Hulton was piloting MK950 OU-X on 6th when he shot down a JU88?[/QUOTE]

Where did you get that information from? I believe it to be incorrect.

And his name was Houlton.

flyingcloggie, it’s well known and documented that ML407 was active and scored the first kill plus had a hand in the second kill on D Day. Right down to the fact that pilot Johnny Houlton flew in it again over the beaches on the 50th Anniversary, as well as mentioning it in his book and in documentaries.

Where are you getting your information from? I’ve never heard it before.

Loads of wartime RNZAF groundcrew have written their experiences up into a book, but not many are widely available. Most books are written just for their families to keep. But there are certainly many 85 an 90 year olds buying PC’s now and typing up their memories.

Few RNZAF cgroundcrew served in the UK so the topic you seek may be harder to find, but I’d wager there are private books out there, unpublished. Do you have SeniorNet or other computer clubs for the elderly there? If you do, contact them as here they encourage and foster the recoding of memories whilst training the older generation in using a computer.