THE
BATTLE OF BRITAIN FILM
I was privileged to be involved in a very small way, first
introduced to the team by way of my father who was a WW2 air gunner, who served
on 44 squadron flying from Spilsby in Lincolnshire.
He stayed on in the Royal Air Force and continued in his pre-war trade as a
coppersmith sheet metal worker while he served at RAF Henlow
he repaired radiators for the non flyers in station workshops.
A most memorable time was the press day at RAF Henlow late 1967 where the ‘allied’ air force was unveiled
and talking to Squadron Leader Bob Stamford-Tuck who was a guest with other
veteran of the battle I still have a press cutting of showing Bob Stamford-Tuck
with my late brother David who was a 9 year old standing on the wing of a
Hurricane chatting to Stamford-Tuck.
In June ‘68 I worked as an odd job boy with the stills team
while on leave from BAOR. Oh yes I was a boy then just 19 years old skinny with
blonde hair. My Leica III generated a lot of interest
with the film crew on the Battle of Britain set due to the unique Luftwaffen Eigentum engraving
(later stolen September 1968 at the Photokina trade fair in Köln Germany) most photos were shot on
the new Ilford FP4 B/W film.
Copies of the photographs taken at Henlow
were originally sent to Air Pictorial Magazine September in 1967 and
photographs and this copy to Flight International in early in 1969 but nothing
was ever published; I have over the years added and corrected some of the data,
the core of the copy remains as first written.
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Duxford
in 1960’s was a very different to the Duxford we now know, with grass and weeds
covering the concrete, some of the married quarters were still in use, the
hangars and other airfield buildings had been abandoned and were mostly empty.
The runway and perimeter tracks were used at weekends to race cars and
motorcycle’s and the airfield had an air of disuse and abandonment. Such a vast
contrast to 28 years previous when 19 squadron Spitfires under the command of
12 group took to the air to defend this island from
the onslaught of the Luftwaffe. All this was all about to change!
1967 saw
producers Harry Salzmann and Benjamin Fisz approached
the Ministry of Defence for permission from to use Duxford as one of the
locations for the film the Battle of Britain, the others being Kenley, Northolt
and North Weald, the main reason Duxford being selected was that the airfield
still had much of its war-time infrastructure.
The
then Secretary of State for Defence, Denis Healy agreed and in the spring of
1968 United Artists moved in and set about restoration. Almost £40,000 was
spent on making the airfield look as it was in 1940, camouflage was reapplied
to the hangars and other buildings, and grass was cut
roads swept and so on. When the crews finished you would not have known it was
1968 there were slit trenches, revetments for aircraft dispersal and sand bags
every where.
The
Battle of Britain was to be a widescreen production, shot on 70mm colour film,
so clips of flying from the actual Battle of Britain were unusable, the
producers had always wanted to re-create the air battles using the same
aircraft and simulating the same clashes which had been fought over the English
Channel and Thames 28 years earlier.
The
problem was obtaining the Spitfires, Hurricanes, Messerschmitt Bf.109’s and Heinkel He.111’s that were to feature in the film, was
contracted an Ex Second World War pathfinder bomber pilot Group Captain Hamish Mahaddie. His task was to track down the aircraft needed. Mahaddie now specialised in buying aircraft for film work.
From a total of over 20,000 Spitfires that had been built by the time
production ceased in the late 1940s, by the early 1960s just a handful remained
that were capable of flying.
Mahaddie managed to
obtain for the film 6 Hurricanes 3 which were flight capable 2 that could taxi
and 1 for static use, There were only six complete Hurricanes left in the world
and Mahaddie had them all! One of them was bought as
scrap by an ex-Canadian Air Force pilot Bob Diemart
who rebuilt it and later flew it across the Atlantic to appear in the film,
sadly this was later destroyed in hangar fire Hamilton Canada in 1993.
The Spitfire population had faired better since the end of production and Mahaddie obtained 32 varying marks with a dozen able to fly
and 7 in taxing condition the rest were used for set dressing and spares usage.
By the
end of 1967 all potential Spitfires and the 5 Hurricanes were readied at RAF Henlow, serviced and cared for by Simpson aero services.
Three Percival Proctors were converted to look like Junkers Ju-87, after a
brief test flight in the only fully converted
aeroplane G-AIEY Vivian Bellamy decide that the conversion was
unstable and large scale radio controlled models made by Pinewood Studio’s
model shop were used instead.
Spitfire
BM597 and Hurricane LF751 were firstly shipped to the BoB
filming unit at RAF Henlow Bedfordshire later at
Pinewood studios they were used as a mould model for replicas being built.
Majority destroyed during filming. For the aircraft of the Luftwaffe, Mahaddie turned to the Spanish Air Force who were still
using Messerschmitt Bf.109s( Hispano HA.1112-M1L) and Heinkel 111s. (CASA 2-111D). These
aircraft had been built under license in Spain and had Rolls-Royce Merlin
engines instead of Daimler-Benz engines. Some 30 odd Heinkel’s
were loaned to United Artists by the Spanish Air Force later United Artists
donated £1000 to the Spanish air force widows fund, Mahaddie
bought 28 Messerschmitt’s (17 flyers) that were being
de-commissioned. Nearly all the pilots were Spanish, although 4 has been
seconded from the Confederate air force in exchange for their participation the
pilots insisted that the aircraft they flew in the film were to be part payment
for the time on set. On March 13 1968 the cameras rolled and the Battle of
Britain began. Tablada airfield in the suburbs of
Seville was the location for the opening scenes where General Milch inspects the Luftwaffe.
It was
around 23rd March that General Adolf Galland
made a visit to the set as the military advisor for the German side of the
story accompanied by Bob Stamford-Tuck. Here he met with Pedro Santa Cruz an
old friend from the Spanish civil war, who was currently the chief Spanish
pilot for the film. It was reported that Santa Cruz whilst chatting with Galland pointed to a Messerschmitt how long is it since you
flew one of those he enquired? Galland paused for a
moment 26 six years replied the General, OK lets see what you can do as he
ushered him over to a twin seat fighter. The entire crew apparently witnessed a
display from the legendary Galland culminating in the
famous victory roll. A few weeks after shooting the films opening credit
sequence at Tablada, two Heinkel
111s and 17 Messerschmitt’s flew to Duxford England
to join up with the Spitfires and Hurricanes for UK filming.
One
amusing incident happened after the formation left Manston
on 14 May 1968 en route Duxford the formation was due to land at Duxford,
suddenly they disappeared out of the pattern and after a call to Duxford from Coltishall radar were spotted orbiting Cambridge’s historic
university, as some one in the tower said “their bloody sightseeing” A little
later they were all safely on the ground. The following day Hispano G-AWHF was
written off having ground looped on landing a common occurrence for narrow
tracked aircraft such as the Hispano and Spitfire.
Filming
was carried out at three airfields, Duxford, Kenley and North Weald, all of
which were operational RAF stations during the actual Battle of Britain.
Filming at Duxford took place on the main airfield itself and in the south-west
corner of the airfield the props department built a 1/3 size château where it
was used for the French evacuation scenes, this area was chosen because there
is grass instead of concrete. Scenes shot in this area of the airfield included
the opening shots of the film where the Hurricane squadrons evacuate from
Northern France, the Luftwaffe at Pas de Calais and the one scene where a
Polish airman is shot down and parachutes into a field to be captured by farm
workers.
The
aerial filming for the Battle of Britain was carried out using a B-25 Mitchell,
belonging to and piloted by Ex RAF pilot John R Hawke. The B-25 had where
cannon and machine-guns had been, camera positions. The front fuselage had been
replaced by an optically pure plexiglass moulding big
enough to allow a 70mm widescreen colour camera to shoot through. The end of
the tail had been taken out completely and a camera rigged up in the rear-gunner's
position. There were also places for cameras to shoot through the optically
pure side windows; and when the bomb-bay doors were opened a stabilised camera
could be lowered capable of shooting over a 360 degree field, controlled by a
cameraman sitting just above it. A Sud Alouette G-AWAP two of the fighters one Spitfire and
Hispano twin seater had cameras fitted as did CASA
G-AWHB.
Unlike
1940 the weather in 1968 was atrocious and aerial filming was sporadic the
decision was made to deploy 9 Spitfires and 3 Hispano HA.1112’s accompanied by
the B-25 to Montpellier to take advantage of the clear blue skies to complete
the aerial sequences. The final aerial shots were completed at Duxford in
late September 1968.
In June
1968, I was worked mainly as a ‘gofer’ with the team, whilst on leave from the
army. A couple of days before the destruction of the hanger at Duxford on the
22nd I had the opportunity of getting up in the camera equipped CASA G-AWHB for
an air test for the bombing run rehearsal for the destruction of the RAF
airfield. It took two takes for that scene first to be filmed on the 21st they
merely blew out the windows and dislodged the doors, the second take the next
day made sure the hanger was truly destroyed. I can be seen running with a
group of airmen towards the damaged hanger around 3 seconds don’t blink or you
will miss me.
I can
say without fear of contradiction that without Ben Fitz’s persistence and the
dogged determination of Hamish Mahaddie in tracking
down the aircraft the world would have been deprived of these historic items
for good. The ‘60’s was and still is remembered as the time of peace and love
and it is quite astounding that an epic war film was conceived and produced
during those years, a true testament to those involved in the project.
After
the filming was completed in 1968 the aircraft were returned to their
respective owners or in the case of the Hispano HA.1112’s simply sold so
started the ‘warbird’ movement 8 of the Hispano
HA.1112’s and one Spitfire ended up with Wilson “Connie” Edwards at Edwards
ranch in Big Spring Texas (allegedly some are still stored there) rest of then
being bought by individuals in the US and Europe.
Most of
the previous text was compiled from comments and chats by the film crew noted
at the time compiled when I returned to my unit in Germany.