Given that the RAF was only 22 years old in 1940 with no real war experience, their achievements, professionalism and courage is nothing short of miraculous. What a breed of men they were and they were as humble as they were brave. The best 👍
@@joyce120860 The high ranking officers of the RAF had seen and fought in the Great War but the majority of the young men who flew in the Battle of Britain were babies or not born in 14-18.
These men - and women! - born with the Century and at later stages - have been /were the Greatest Generation! And this film by the excellence of its film coverage AND vocal coverage is heart-warming and mind-inspiring! Humility? you bet! Rember some of these young lads completely new to flying had only a few hours’ flying experience before they were thrust up into the air by the urgencies of the moment! God bless them all Each and Every One…And don’t let our youngsters of today forget it!
That was Sqdn leader Don McDonell talking in a group ,and at the end facing the camera.got very involved on the hardest Day of the battle 18th August 1940.
I’ve been flying for almost 45 years, I can’t imagine what it would have been like flying agricultural flying machines with very little experience all the while being shot at! Bravery at its finest!
Ah, yes - flying at 20,000 feet with the canopy open, no goggles, and the mask half off. That would indeed make you feel a bit isolated and woozy. Hypoxia is a bitch that way.
The flight leader with his canopy open, his half mast oxygen mask and his overacting looking for the enemy was filmed on the ground for the benefit of the camera. Sad to say though that by the time this film was available to the public quite a few of these gallant young men were already dead.
The main reason: to improve aerodynamic flow over the leading edge of the wing during takeoff and cruise before combat. The difference could be more than 5mph in speed and 10-15 minutes in endurance.
First response wasnt that clear. They would put a patch of canvas over the end of the gun barrels to cover the holes, improve aerodynamics. So what you are seeing are rhe shreds of this canvas after it has been shot through. If you look at pictures / models its normally a red rectangle over the gun barrels.
More than once emphasis was placed on the importance of the oxygen mask. And more than once we see the pilot's nose not even covered by the mask flying around with an open canopy.
If only I were born then do so want a spitfire to be a pilot in the Most Beautiful sexy fighter plane ever & Ho that Rolls Royce Merlin engine what a sound none better🇬🇧🥰🙏⛪️🙏🥰🇬🇧
@@scottlewisparsons9551Yes, I was curious why someone had re-labelled this as a "propaganda" film🤔, that was until the second half when he went on to shoot down 5 of the hun in a single sortie 😂. I seem to recall that 5 kills would have qualified him as an "ace", and all in a single sortie.
@@rickbear7249 yes, five kills was an ace. I had a quick look at parts of it again. This film was in 1940, during the Battle of Britain, I still think that it was propaganda, however, perhaps also with the intention of recruiting more new pilots. Have a good day from Sydney Australia 🇦🇺
Well, that’s what they were called. These are not airports, which were developed for commercial aviation. These air strips were often not much more than paddocks in use for the duration of the war.
@@robwilde855 that’s interesting. Aerodromes is still used, probably for smaller establishments. I was thinking about Rongotai aerodrome becoming Wellington airport in New Zealand. Originally it was a couple of grass strips and an aircraft factory until they opened an airport in 1959. Have a look at videos of the opening.
Yes. Certainly the term 'airport' is a valid word [coined by analogy with the older word 'seaport'], and is used by all, and has been, since its first application with airships very early in the last century. Airfield is another choice, and seems to be used mostly as an alternative for aerodrome, don't you think? However, I've just checked my latest official international 1:500,000 Aeronautical chart for southern England [Edition 48], published by our government's Civil Aviation Authority, and there's not a single reference to airfield or airport. All, civil or military, and of ANY size, including Heathrow, etc, are referred to as 'aerodromes'. It could be, though, that nowadays only pilots habitually use the term. @@scottlewisparsons9551
@@scottlewisparsons9551 I was referencing relatively, apples to apples so to speak. It's still utterly image quality rubbish for a film of its era. 1:33 was the standard frame of the day for Brit films like this. Even digitised and uploaded in 480p it would be superior to this dross. I watch a lot of BFI films from the same era and earlier. Digitally restored in high res of course are superb, but even unrestored but digitally converted properly are significantly better than this. Another of his recent uploads "A Fighter Has Crashed" was even worse. I love this archival stuff, and the only comment I have to make is unwatchable the pair of them. Less haste and quantity, more attention to conversion quality. If you can't discern the difference and lack the experience to comprehend why, best refrain from commenting.
Thanks. Yes, this is a TH-cam channel classified "education" . So kids are an important part of it. Also, this channel's analytics show 80 per cent of its views are on HD televisions, not PCs, mobiles or tablets. As these old films are all out of copyright and available in a variety of places in a variety of formats, I've chosen to try and optimise for the majority of my audience. Naturally, as a consumer, you get the standard issue "one vote, one value". And I know I can't please everyone all the time. Just as many as I can.
@@ArmouredCarriers Word salad. You're utterly transparent. The initial stuff you uploaded was watchable. This isn't. I know why. Stop being so greedy chasing the alogrithm $$$ trying to boost content volume overnight and take more time & care converting the material to digitised format.
As Churchill alluded to the RAF stopped the invasion of our island. So many young men gave their lives in the air. And yet War is glorified it has to be to intice a nation to fight. For me a better way is to remove country leaders who want war from office and save immense suffering of nations and innocent people.
The problem - of course - is when that *other* nation wants to fight. The classic schoolyard bully scenario: Just let them beat you up and take your pocket money every lunchtime? Or not?
@@ArmouredCarriers But what happens when we are the schoolyard bully? The World Wars of the 20th century might have been existential wars of self-defence, but all the wars of Empire certainly weren't.
Then I guess it's a difficult matter of "compare and contrast". What would 80 years of a world dominated by Nazism look like? What would 80 years of a world dominated by Facism look like? What would 80 years of a world dominated by an Emperor look like? What would a world dominated by a single (insert theocracy of choice) look like? I suspect almost every answer would be guided by ideology, indoctrination and, in some places, censorship - along with brutally different dreams of a "perfect" world where everybody was the same as "ourselves". But I can almost guarantee that in every above scenario, we wouldn't be allowed to be having this discussion. I for one trust that my grandfathers, great uncles and great aunts fought and died for the freedom to have this debate. And for an admittedly imperfect system (democracy) which at least has various sets of "emergency release valves" that allow change without the need for mass murder. Democracy, as it is said, is the worst form of government - except for all the others! @@jamesc9274
@@ArmouredCarriers Ultra-leftist scholars like Noam Chumpsky & Alan John Percival Taylor along with George Blake would have us believe that after 1945, the UK 🇬🇧 should have dumped the Atlantic Alliance & enter into the Eastern bloc. Except for George Blake who stayed east, the 2 estimable Western scholars above preferred to stay west while rabidly demeaning the Western World 🌎 “There Was Nothing Wrong With Hitler, except he was a German.” AJP Taylor ‘The origins of the Second World War’(1968) Same for (west)German journalist Erich Kuby who professed to prefer sov’s occupation of Germany to the American’s. & persisted to live under the latter’s occupying administration. Apparently he preferred Bonn to Pankow. Erich Kuby “The Russians and Berlin”(1968) Ballantine Books
Given that the RAF was only 22 years old in 1940 with no real war experience, their achievements, professionalism and courage is nothing short of miraculous. What a breed of men they were and they were as humble as they were brave. The best 👍
No real war experience ? What did they do in the Great War ?
@@joyce120860 The high ranking officers of the RAF had seen and fought in the Great War but the majority of the young men who flew in the Battle of Britain were babies or not born in 14-18.
These men - and women! - born with the Century and at later stages - have been /were the Greatest Generation! And this film by the excellence of its film coverage AND vocal coverage is heart-warming and mind-inspiring! Humility? you bet! Rember some of these young lads completely new to flying had only a few hours’ flying experience before they were thrust up into the air by the urgencies of the moment!
God bless them all Each and Every One…And don’t let our youngsters of today forget it!
@@joyce120860 most of these pilots were babies in ww1! The old guys who fought in ww1 were running the armed forces in ww2.
@@joyce120860 The RAF didn't exist until the 1st April 1918.
I enjoyed this. Thank You. "Never in the history of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few".
Thank you. Fascinating view of fighter command.
2 bladed props on those spits at 0:48. Can't see any squadron codes either. This would have been old footage by 1940!
That was Sqdn leader Don McDonell talking in a group ,and at the end facing the camera.got very involved on the hardest Day of the battle 18th August 1940.
I’ve been flying for almost 45 years, I can’t imagine what it would have been like flying agricultural flying machines with very little experience all the while being shot at! Bravery at its finest!
Ah, yes - flying at 20,000 feet with the canopy open, no goggles, and the mask half off. That would indeed make you feel a bit isolated and woozy. Hypoxia is a bitch that way.
Good point. Probably filmed at low level.
The flight leader with his canopy open, his half mast oxygen mask and his overacting looking for the enemy was filmed on the ground for the benefit of the camera.
Sad to say though that by the time this film was available to the public quite a few of these gallant young men were already dead.
Yes the oxygen mask not covering his nose etc.
Thank you .
Can somebody please explain to me what the flapping canvas is all about when they show a close up of the guns firing?
The main reason: to improve aerodynamic flow over the leading edge of the wing during takeoff and cruise before combat. The difference could be more than 5mph in speed and 10-15 minutes in endurance.
First response wasnt that clear. They would put a patch of canvas over the end of the gun barrels to cover the holes, improve aerodynamics. So what you are seeing are rhe shreds of this canvas after it has been shot through. If you look at pictures / models its normally a red rectangle over the gun barrels.
@@ArmouredCarriersand it prevents dirt getting into the guns too.
Also prevents guns from icing over at altitude
It stops birds flying down the guns and eating all the bullets, still happens today
Espérance de vie : 25 ans !! Respects les jeunes !
Great stuff!
In the early days of Vic's and a weaver at the back
"Arse end charlie".... who was often only realised to be missing after he'd been shot down in flames.
Yeah, noticed that too, it is 1940 so not surprising.
They changed to “finger four” formation, similar to the Germans when they found that the vic formation didn’t work too well.
Vics…what the German pilots called ‘the row of idiots’ . Caused a lot of losses until the RAF updated their tactics
If this was a hard Recruitment push, then the Few are even greater than we might think.
"..BEWARE ! The Hunn in the sun .. or ,being Britain, ..BEWARE the fiend in the fog !.." :D
Don't forget about Polish team number 302 303. One of the best pilots in that time ...
bless them all
My dad had a spitty pilot in his hairdressers. i used to talk to him. he said upside down in the clods. the name was brian baker
More than once emphasis was placed on the importance of the oxygen mask. And more than once we see the pilot's nose not even covered by the mask flying around with an open canopy.
Don’t think this was meant at all as a recruitment film.
"Height indicator"
If only I were born then do so want a spitfire to be a pilot in the Most Beautiful sexy fighter plane ever & Ho that Rolls Royce Merlin engine what a sound none better🇬🇧🥰🙏⛪️🙏🥰🇬🇧
If only it were that easy!
"Instructional"?
Probably not. Propaganda yes!
@@scottlewisparsons9551Yes, I was curious why someone had re-labelled this as a "propaganda" film🤔, that was until the second half when he went on to shoot down 5 of the hun in a single sortie 😂. I seem to recall that 5 kills would have qualified him as an "ace", and all in a single sortie.
@@rickbear7249 yes, five kills was an ace. I had a quick look at parts of it again. This film was in 1940, during the Battle of Britain, I still think that it was propaganda, however, perhaps also with the intention of recruiting more new pilots. Have a good day from Sydney Australia 🇦🇺
@scottlewisparsons9551 yes propaganda with ott string orchestra score
✨🏴✨🥰✨👍✨♥️✨🤗✨.
„Aerodromes!“ - Jules Verne lurking round the door😂
That is what they were called.... even in my own lifetime.
Well, that’s what they were called. These are not airports, which were developed for commercial aviation. These air strips were often not much more than paddocks in use for the duration of the war.
They are still called aerodromes. Look on any ICAO Aeronautical chart, or ask any pilot.
'Airport' and 'airfield' are lay terms.
@@robwilde855 that’s interesting. Aerodromes is still used, probably for smaller establishments. I was thinking about Rongotai aerodrome becoming Wellington airport in New Zealand. Originally it was a couple of grass strips and an aircraft factory until they opened an airport in 1959. Have a look at videos of the opening.
Yes. Certainly the term 'airport' is a valid word [coined by analogy with the older word 'seaport'], and is used by all, and has been, since its first application with airships very early in the last century. Airfield is another choice, and seems to be used mostly as an alternative for aerodrome, don't you think?
However, I've just checked my latest official international 1:500,000 Aeronautical chart for southern England [Edition 48], published by our government's Civil Aviation Authority, and there's not a single reference to airfield or airport. All, civil or military, and of ANY size, including Heathrow, etc, are referred to as 'aerodromes'.
It could be, though, that nowadays only pilots habitually use the term.
@@scottlewisparsons9551
Please stop trying to 16:9 these for the kids and show them in original 1:33 format. The blurry pixelisation is woeful.
What are you getting at? This is an old film dated 1940, therefore not particularly good quality compared with today.
@@scottlewisparsons9551 I was referencing relatively, apples to apples so to speak. It's still utterly image quality rubbish for a film of its era. 1:33 was the standard frame of the day for Brit films like this. Even digitised and uploaded in 480p it would be superior to this dross.
I watch a lot of BFI films from the same era and earlier. Digitally restored in high res of course are superb, but even unrestored but digitally converted properly are significantly better than this.
Another of his recent uploads "A Fighter Has Crashed" was even worse. I love this archival stuff, and the only comment I have to make is unwatchable the pair of them.
Less haste and quantity, more attention to conversion quality.
If you can't discern the difference and lack the experience to comprehend why, best refrain from commenting.
@@theblytonian3906 please accept my apologies. Thank you for the details backing up your comment they make sense. Have a good day.
Thanks. Yes, this is a TH-cam channel classified "education" . So kids are an important part of it.
Also, this channel's analytics show 80 per cent of its views are on HD televisions, not PCs, mobiles or tablets.
As these old films are all out of copyright and available in a variety of places in a variety of formats, I've chosen to try and optimise for the majority of my audience.
Naturally, as a consumer, you get the standard issue "one vote, one value".
And I know I can't please everyone all the time. Just as many as I can.
@@ArmouredCarriers Word salad.
You're utterly transparent.
The initial stuff you uploaded was watchable. This isn't. I know why.
Stop being so greedy chasing the alogrithm $$$ trying to boost content volume overnight and take more time & care converting the material to digitised format.
Rightly called LORDS OF THE AIR
You pretty much had a 50/50 chance of being killed.
Too bad the pilots didn't know the absolute dangers of smoking a cigarette(! ) LOL
Yeah, we all know now that smoking a cigarette is dangerous to your health….so is being in the middle of a war zone. 😂
As Churchill alluded to the RAF stopped the invasion of our island.
So many young men gave their lives in the air.
And yet War is glorified it has to be to intice a nation to fight.
For me a better way is to remove country leaders who want war from office and save immense suffering of nations and innocent people.
The problem - of course - is when that *other* nation wants to fight.
The classic schoolyard bully scenario: Just let them beat you up and take your pocket money every lunchtime? Or not?
@@ArmouredCarriers But what happens when we are the schoolyard bully? The World Wars of the 20th century might have been existential wars of self-defence, but all the wars of Empire certainly weren't.
Then I guess it's a difficult matter of "compare and contrast".
What would 80 years of a world dominated by Nazism look like?
What would 80 years of a world dominated by Facism look like?
What would 80 years of a world dominated by an Emperor look like?
What would a world dominated by a single (insert theocracy of choice) look like?
I suspect almost every answer would be guided by ideology, indoctrination and, in some places, censorship - along with brutally different dreams of a "perfect" world where everybody was the same as "ourselves".
But I can almost guarantee that in every above scenario, we wouldn't be allowed to be having this discussion.
I for one trust that my grandfathers, great uncles and great aunts fought and died for the freedom to have this debate. And for an admittedly imperfect system (democracy) which at least has various sets of "emergency release valves" that allow change without the need for mass murder.
Democracy, as it is said, is the worst form of government - except for all the others!
@@jamesc9274
@@ArmouredCarriers
George McFly tried it with Biff Tannen.
It worked for Biff all the rest of
McFly’s life.
@@ArmouredCarriers
Ultra-leftist scholars like Noam
Chumpsky & Alan John Percival
Taylor along with George Blake
would have us believe that after
1945, the UK 🇬🇧 should have dumped the Atlantic Alliance
& enter into the Eastern bloc.
Except for George Blake who
stayed east, the 2 estimable
Western scholars above preferred to stay west while
rabidly demeaning the Western
World 🌎
“There Was Nothing Wrong With Hitler, except he was a German.”
AJP Taylor ‘The origins of the
Second World War’(1968)
Same for (west)German journalist Erich Kuby who
professed to prefer sov’s occupation of Germany
to the American’s.
& persisted to live under the
latter’s occupying administration.
Apparently he preferred Bonn to Pankow.
Erich Kuby “The Russians and Berlin”(1968) Ballantine Books
Nobody dies in this film… true propaganda.
first, show me my affordable home. then ill consider defending the nation.
otherwise. naff off.