The Spitfire: Britain's Flying Past

[Chris558]

Anyone else see this? I wasn't that impressed with it. It was very 'personal account' heavy - fine, but not so much of the Spit, but the war generally.

I was expecting things like the conception of the Spit, and how good a war machine it really was and how it compared to other contemporaries.

Not a programme I would be eager to watch again, I'm sorry to have to say.

[cstorey]

I'm afraid I agree . It was very sloppily produced, and tried to hint that the featured aircraft had something to do with the Battle of Britain when it was not produced until 1943 as far as i could see. The best bits were the recollections of those such as Jeffrey Wellum who had flown them in 1940

[Nigel H-J]

Oh dear, the wifey has recorded that for me to watch which I will do tonight but on reading the above it might just be fast forwarded............to the end!!!

BTW, just bought a book from Waterstones 'First Light' by Jeffrey Wellum, having seen a 'Docu Film' of his time during the Battle of Britain really looking forward to reading this!!

Regards
Nigel.

[Blister]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/goo ... -more.html

Just found this highlighted in another forum - unfortunately, I can't get the video to work in either IE9 or Firefox

Will have a trawl and see if I can find links anywhere else...

B

[Blister]

Will have a trawl and see if I can find links anywhere else... B

Not a video - but some beautiful photos!

http://www.warbirdinformationexchange.o ... 75&start=0

B

[FlyTexas]

Definitely beautiful pics. [curious yank] Why did they paint the underside of half of the aircraft black? [/curious yank]

Brian

[airboatr]

Why did they paint the underside of half of the aircraft black?

Night flying I suppose.

some were painted "float plane blue"

[Motormouse]

For you curious Yanks... the black and white undersides were a 'recognition' scheme on British fighters only;
for those aeroplanes destined for the Expeditionary Air Force in France @ 1939; however as it was an Air Ministry thing
all fighters being delivered from the factories got that scheme; which lasted until @ June 1940 when it was decided
that camouflaged undersides (officially duck-egg blue) would be better after all.

However the usual beauracracy prevailed and in @ Nov 1940 an order was made to paint underside of left (port) wing only
in black as a recognition feature; with rest of undersides being 'sky' (duck-egg blue); this lasted until @ April 1941 when commonsense once again prevailed

ttfn

Pete

ps 96 deg in KDFW today!

[FlyTexas]

Thanks very much for the info Pete. I hope you brought a jacket with you...the high temp for the Dallas area tomorrow (Sunday) is only expected to be 94.

Brian (aka the curious Yank)

[Dev One]

I thought the black/white underside was for easy recognition by the searchlight crews at night, mind you I think that a lot of the ground AA teams were very trigger happy in the early years & not well trained in aircraft recognition.
Keith