"17 mistakes from the Movie Battle of Britain (1969)" Topic

See here…

moviemistakes.com/film1691

Anyway… a great movie!.

Amicalement
Armand

Didn't the person compiling the list stop to consider that the film would never have been made if the Spanish Me109's and HE111's were available for use?

Is he someone from the CGI age perhaps?

We really need a rolling eyes emoji.

until then…

Agreed!

I'm just glad they made the movie!
I still like seeing it from time to time.

I agree that when the movie was made in 1969 they should have had the foresight to have made it in 1940/41 when all of the correct aircraft would have been available. I'm certain that the British and German governments would have accommodated the director in the spirit of historical accuracy.

yes the had postwar berliet trucks towing the engineering equipment, but i guess pre ww2 trucks were hard to find

I loved that movie! Special ordered the LP soundtrack (still have it) and played it till I knew all the tunes and what happened during the movie. When some of my childhood friends and I get together we still go, "Nitzies! Nitzies!"

It's the sound of Merlin engines that get me. Love it.

This guy is a putz.

You can teach monkeys to critique better than that.

One of my favourite scenes

"Help Yourselves Everybody -There's No Fighter Escort"

YouTube link

You can rivet count as much as you want, I am glad the movie expresses the feelins of the time very well.

I was a toddler when my parents took me to see it in '69. The Messerschmitt and Spitfire kiddie rides at the theatre entrance were the highlight of the time back then for me.

However, at the end of the opening scene, the aircrew are ordered to burn the grounded aircraft and to flee for evacuation… Everyone in the theatre over the age of twenty-five was bawling their eyes out…

The kind of memory that will never leave you, and this was in Canada yet,,,. I don't expect the reaction was any different in any other Commonwealth country.

One of my favourite scenes

It's a great scene….but now that I know that there was an inaccurate door bell in an earlier scene….it's just not the same….

I watch BoB & The Blue Max at least twice a year. I have for 20 years, at least. Still 2 of my favorite movies. I don't give a damn how many "mistakes" are in either one.
Peter

Worse than an inaccurate door bell – this is one of the scenes that has the duplicated footage. Which I had never really noticed or bothered about.

Probably the only 1 of his points that has ever bothered me was the mountains behind the station in the Pas de Calais. As for the rest – so what! Saw this when released in a cinema that sadly no longer exists. Went with my father who was WW2 bomber crew and we both enjoyed it. I could watch it again hand again. A few years ago I saw 1 of the 109s restored to flying condition as it appeared in the film, along with 10 Hurricanes and Spitfires. Awesome sight.

The bit in the film where they're just about to torch the Hurricanes and the 109s streak in: Well those 109s were pretty low and I think the lead pilot was Ray Hanna, a legend of a pilot and master of flying 10 feet off the deck.

However, not in the film was where Adolf Galland was at an air field watching proceedings when someone asked if he'd like to take a Buchon up for a spin. Apparently he did flick rolls down the runway and did his best to pull the wings off the thing before landing. On getting out the cockpit he was a ball of sweat, which isn't surprising as he hadn't flown a 109 for 25 years!

I was lucky enough to see parts of it being filmed at North Weald where I lived at that time. The camouflaged hangers were only camouflaged on two sides and the roof, the other sides were left grey. Saw a couple of prop Hurricanes blown up, and burning, but most of the scenes were filmed while I was in school :( They could not film it there now as the M11 motorway runs alongside the airfield.

I would agree with the eye-rolls on criticism of the ersatz Me-109s and He-111s, and the sub-models of the Spitfires. I think the producers made the right choices, and got about as close as was practical to the "right stuff" at that time. I mean, compared to M47 "Tiger tanks" vs. M24 "Shermans" in the "other" BoB movie (Battle of the Bulge), the producers of this movie showed an extraordinary level of care about finding the right equipment, for that era.

That said, some of the criticisms are valid, showing either lack of attention to detail, or lack of regard for the audience's attention to detail, or just plain "nope, don't care, ain't gonna do that over again".

To wit:

The bit in the film where they're just about to torch the Hurricanes and the 109s streak in …

As noted in the critique … go back and watch that scene again, and look at the bullet strikes across the ground as the 109's come in strafing. The sequence of when which plane strafes, versus when which bullet strikes appear on the ground, is out of sequence.

YouTube link
(Strafing attack starts at about 5:00, with the strafing run that is mis-sequenced starting at 5:10.)

It's pretty comical, actually.

Nothing to do with the tech of the era. Just a matter of not getting it right, and not bothering to do it over again.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

The only thing that irritates me in BoB is the 'linear' tactics of the German fighters. They attack in line astern when they should be line abreast in 'finger fours'.

I understand it was a filming decision as wide formations would not have filmed well.

Likewise there are very few turning fights in the Korean War film The Hunters as linear flight and tail chases were easier to film than turning fights.

Barry

I would add that an exploding JU87 also appears in The Battle of Midway. I know the JU87R had extended range but I don't think it extended as far as the Pacific.

And fans of The Big Bang Theory may care to note that Hawker Hurricanes appear in the montage of stills at the beginning of each episode.