October 24, 2025 • 51 mins
In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we take to the skies for Battle of Britain (1969), Guy Hamilton’s sweeping recreation of the 1940 air campaign. We talk about the film's impressive aerial combat scenes, its documentary-style storytelling, and the astonishing number of real WWII aircraft used on set.
From Christopher Plummer’s dashing Canadian pilot to Michael Caine’s brief but memorable role, we explore how the film mirrors Tora! Tora! Tora! in scope while giving overdue credit to the women of the WAAF. Expect plenty of radar talk, command tensions, and reflections on why this film might teach you more than it thrills.
🖥️ Visit our website: www.rosiethereviewer.com
📸 Follow us on Instagram: @rosiethereviewerpodcast
💬 Join the conversation and leave a review. We’d love to hear your thoughts!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome to Rosie the Reviewer. We're your host.
I'm Sam. And I'm married to.
And we like World War 2 media and we want to talk about it.
Welcome back to Rosideo reviewer.
This week we are covering the Battle of Britain, which came
out in 1969, so a little while ago.
(00:23):
It's a film directed by Guy Hamilton and written by James
Kenaway and Wilford Greater Acts.
It's based on a book called The Narrow Margin, The Battle of
Britain and the Rise of Airpowerfrom 1930 to 19. 49.
That book came out in 1961 by Jerick Wood and Derek Dempster.
(00:45):
They sure do like the Dereks over there.
The movie attempts to faithfullydepict real life figures
involved in the Battle of Britain underground and over the
skies for Great Britain in 1940.And if you're wondering, there
are many, many, many, many, manycharacters and you will forget
all of them because they are notvery distantive.
(01:05):
You can watch this if you want. You probably should.
It's on Amazon Prime. What did you think of that song?
I don't think they really make movies like this anymore.
There's not really a central character or group of
characters. They made the attempt, I guess,
but mostly it's kind of this documentary style.
(01:27):
Here's what happened during the Battle of Britain.
Here's. The.
Central figures. Here's what they were talking
about. A guy might pop up and never pop
up again, and it hasn't really been streamlined in any way, and
you're just supposed to be able to kind of follow along.
I think they assume the audiencehas quite a lot of context
already, and based on when it came out, they're probably
(01:47):
right. I thought the aerial combat
scenes were pretty cool. This is a period, of course,
when they would have been able to use a lot of real planes.
They would have used a lot of practical effects, and the
results is kind of neat to watch, especially because given
the passage of time, there will never be another World War 2
aerial battle filmed with all ofthese actual planes, with all
(02:10):
these practical effects. Of course we would use what's
available now, we would use CGI,etcetera.
So I enjoyed that and I also liked that there was female main
character was stuff to do. The Women's Auxiliary Air Force
was quite a major part of the Battle of Britain and they did
attempt to show them in this movie.
They also got some accolades in the book which I read and so I
(02:31):
did enjoy that aspect. I will say that I found the book
very technical. If you're really interested in
makes and models of airplanes and types of engines and how
many of each make and model weremanufactured in which year, then
you'll enjoy the book. And the back half of the book is
essentially a day by day accountof the Battle of Britain, what
(02:52):
got bombed and how many planes were lost on each side, how many
sorties were flown. So it's very thoroughly
researched, very exhaustive. I did learn a lot.
It was a little dry, and I foundthat dryness translated into the
movie. What did you think of it?
I think you're pretty much already summed it up.
I didn't know a lot about the Battle of Britain, strangely,
(03:12):
but I do know so they've done a good job in educating me and I
am curious to see maybe other movies depicting this battle
with maybe a little bit more storytelling.
I didn't care particularly much about many of the characters
because a lot of them are like higher ups and brass, and even
the characters that weren't necessarily based on real
(03:35):
people, they didn't have that many interesting things to do.
So I don't know. It's good, but it's not great.
I thought it was quite long and I feel like I lacked the context
that they are kind of assuming you have going into the movie.
So in the beginning I was like, what's happening?
Where are we, what's going on? But it got slightly better as
(03:59):
the movie progressed. And I did have, I think, real
Germans in this, which was wrong.
But I don't know if I would watch it again.
Probably not. So overall the music made me
laugh, though the music is fun. It's like really old timey
fanfare music. Yeah, definitely.
(04:19):
I think I read somewhere that the original music for the movie
was even more patriotic and our glorious war, and then they
redid it before the movie came out.
I think that was this movie thatI read that about.
But yeah, actually, like you said, this movie is kind of like
Tora Tora Tora, the movie that we covered about Pearl Harbor,
where you get the Japanese perspective and the American
(04:42):
perspective. This movie was kind of like
that. We did get to see what the
Germans were doing and what the brass were talking about on
their side as well. And the book does cover that.
It's ostensibly just a history of the Battle of Britain.
It's not supposed to be from theBritish perspective, but you can
really tell that the two authorsare British.
Well, I think one of the most born elsewhere in the Empire,
(05:02):
but he did come to Britain and join the RAF.
That's quite clear to me from the book.
Like for example I had previously read that the British
British really underestimated the Germans radar ability early
in the war for probably too longwith disastrous results, and in
this book they presented it the other way around.
So I just thought it was interesting that you can tell
(05:23):
who wrote it and what their motivations are.
I feel like that's also true forthe.
Movie because the Germans are a little bit silly sometimes.
For sure. Yeah, definitely.
Anyway, let's get into it because we have a lot of notes.
Here's the plot. So we start in France in May
(05:48):
1940. A plane which is piloted by
Jamie, played by James Cosmo, does a victory role over a group
of French refugees fleeing Parisand his quadrant leader, Colin
Harvey, played by Christopher Plummer.
Lemeri Dashing doesn't really like it that he does that and he
he kind of chews them out for it.
(06:08):
And also, he's Canadian. Yes, very excited to see not
only Christopher Plummer, who ofcourse is Canadian, but also
he's playing an RCAF pilot, so that's nice.
And as we open the scene, we seethat the British pilots in the
area have to evacuate. Because the Germans are coming
(06:29):
and they have to destroy any planes that they can't take but
them. Which is a shame.
Would like hurt me to see them throw gasoline on these
beautiful Spitfires and hurricanes.
Yeah, because they. Of course, after many aerial
battles they would have planes that weren't airworthy and you
don't want the technology to fall into German hands.
May 19th 1940 is the date more or less when most British
(06:52):
squadrons evacuated as the German army rushed towards them.
The last squadrons didn't leave until the Dunkirk evacuation was
complete. But this is kind of the the mark
of the British going fuck. We have underestimated the scale
of the problem. Better pack up and go home and
ready ourselves for what comes next.
It's funny to me that the battlewas ultimately won by the
(07:15):
British because the Germans did have larger numbers and not by a
little like. By a lot.
So. But I guess you can never
underestimate the British either, which is what I think
did happen. Yeah, there is.
And I mean, there were some issues with German leadership.
Well, we'll get into all of it, I suppose.
So the British Expeditionary Force who had come to France to
(07:39):
support the French, Belgian and Dutch people when they were
invaded by the Germans, they're evacuating at Dunkirk.
This is a disastrous situation. Hundreds of thousands of
soldiers on the beach. France is about to capitulate to
the Germans. We get a scene where Air Chief
Marshall Sir Hugh Dowding, played by Laurence Olivier.
By the way, he's important because he's going to serve as
(08:00):
the air officer commanding of the Royal Air Force Fighter
Command during the upcoming Battle of Britain.
So we get introduced to him here, and he's explaining how
he's prioritizing home defense over sending more planes across
the Channel. And this decision by doubting is
true to life. The Germans achieved air
superiority over the obsolete and underprepared French Air
Force, supported by squadrons ofthe British Royal Air Force in
(08:22):
about two days. And the British continue to send
additional squadrons, but they ended up losing a ream of their
best pilots in the process, US and 25% of their total
interceptor strength. So Doubting wrote to the Under
Secretary of State at the War Ministry towards the end of the
Battle of France, saying basically if we lose in France,
that defeat will involve the final, complete and irremediable
(08:42):
defeat of this country as well. So we get to see him make that
decision in real time in the movie.
And then we get a Churchill quote from June 18th, 1940,
where he says the Battle of France is over, the Battle of
Britain is about to begin, and the name of the book upon which
this movie is based. The narrow margin also comes
from a Churchill quote. He had said all the great
struggles of history have been won by superior willpower.
(09:05):
Sting victory in the teeth of odds or upon the narrowest of
margins. It's such a bombastic.
Card isn't it? I'm like, what does this mean?
Yeah, he's, you know, Churchill.He's a, he's a little full of
himself sometimes, you know, he's, he's full of hot air.
Larger than life. And Doubting was actually one of
several participants in the Battle of Britain who consulted
(09:26):
on this movie. He also visited I think the set
of his office that was recreatedto look exactly the same I
think, which I think is pretty neat.
Yeah, they do have a lot of attention to detail in this
movie. If it can be historically
accurate, it more or less is. We were just a lift buffer.
Make preparations to interpret by air and we are at the British
(09:50):
Embassy in Switzerland, where the British ambassador Sir David
Kelly, played by Rolf Richardson, and the German
ambassador, Baron von Leisler, played by Kurt Jurgens, discuss
how Germany. Really doesn't want to invade
Britain, but they will person doesn't let them do what they
want on the continent, he says. Europe is ours.
(10:11):
The sea was kind of funny to me because the.
The British ambassadors just like how many sugars do you want
in your tea again, is it 2 and. It made me laugh.
Yeah, it's funny, this diplomacyon the eve of warfare, right?
And I mean, Hitler really did respect the British, but I don't
think if you're Germany who has taken over the bulk.
Of the continent you can risk, you know, having the British at
(10:33):
your back. Undefeated, especially if your
next plan is to potentially takeon the Soviets.
Exactly. And then as the Baron leaves, we
do see David Kelly kind of saying to you, I don't know, his
secretary, maybe, I don't remember, but that they are in
trouble. He doesn't say it to the Baron,
but he does say it behind close doors.
(10:54):
Yeah, now it's June 1940. We see air sector controllers
being trained on how to guide planes in the air.
So this would be when you have squadrons of planes being
scrambled, you need to be able to guide them to intersection
points when the enemy is coming so you can cut them off.
And we see some pilots undergoing additional training.
So this is all the preparations on the British side.
Meanwhile, in Germany, the Germans are yucking it up
(11:17):
because they think the radar masks on the English coast are
just radio direction finders. But the British actually had
developed quite a cohesive framework for air defense
throughout the 1930s. They didn't really get caught,
you know, with their pants down or anything.
Robert Watson Watt was a scientist, and he had worked on
high frequency radio and atmospheric research.
And in 1932, he drafted a reportthat basically said if an
(11:39):
aircraft meets a shortwave radiopulse, it'll reflect a signal
back to the ground. And you can measure that time
lag between the reflection and hitting the ground in
microseconds. And if you have a time base, the
distance between the aircraft from the radio station can then
be measured. And he wasn't the first person
to discover this, but he was thefirst person to kind of develop
it for this purpose. And so A-Team, led by Watson
(12:01):
Watts, successfully use radio waves to detect aircraft for the
first time in 19, 1935. And this was the basis for the
radar system that the British would build over the ensuing
five years. They constructed all these radar
bases along the coast, and thesewere used to detect incoming
attacks from across the English Channel, but they were blind to
their rear, which is where the rest of this defense system
comes in. So after the radar alerts that
(12:23):
the enemy planes are coming, information then gets passed to
the observer corps inland. And these are literally people
in buildings, on hilltops, in fields.
This is a very manual exercise and they would track and pass on
information about numbers of planes, altitude, trajectory,
all this stuff to one another and ultimately on to the
operations rooms of fighting sectors.
(12:44):
So the whole time that planes are in British airspace, the
British are tracking them and they know where they're going
and how many of them there are and what's going on for the most
part. And then once they get this
information to the operations rooms of the fighting sectors,
they can use these complex for the time radio technology and
manual triangulation, and they can direct their own squadrons
(13:06):
to intercept these enemy attacks.
In particular, they had a navigation system called
Pipsqueak, which used high frequency direction finding
receivers to allow the British to plot the direction of their
own fighters. Because the pilots used to have
to use dead reckoning, they really had no way of knowing
where they were supposed to be going beyond manual navigation.
And this also made it easier forthe planes to be successfully
(13:28):
guided back to base. So it was a big deal.
And the Germans, perhaps becausetheir own efforts were focused
predominantly on offense, they really did not have, you know, a
vast sense of system of defense setup because they didn't think
they were potentially going to need it.
They had little notion of the complexity of the British
defense system that they were taking on.
They knew the British had radar,but they believed it rudimentary
compared to their own systems sounds.
(13:49):
Familiar, doesn't it? Because that's also what they
thought about. Enigma and whatever else there
was going on in the British and elite side.
So I feel like. They underestimate their enemy
quite extensively throughout thewar.
Yeah, definitely a problem for sure for them.
I do like that this movie kind of shows here the entire chain
(14:09):
from radar to the control room to the inland people like you
see all of them. That's quite interesting.
I don't think modern movies would do that anymore.
So it's quite nice to see the entire chain and.
It's wild to think about now, right?
But I mean, you would have to, if I'm in one area and I see, I
don't know, 20 planes going overhead and I know what
(14:30):
direction they're going. And I got to call you in your
area and be like, I'm seeing allthese planes, keep an eye out
for them. And you're like, hey, I'm going
to watch and you're going to seewhere they're coming, and you're
going to track that information.And we're all going to know
where the planes are. I mean, nowadays we have the
technology. We don't have to do this.
This was a very complex system that involved a lot of people
having to be good at their jobs.And also not get shocked.
(14:50):
In the meantime. Well, for sure, I mean, the
we're going to talk more about the Women's Auxiliary Air Force,
the the wafts, as they call themin a bit.
These were ladies who worked quite extensively in these
control rooms. And literally there would be
points where I mean, and in the book, the authors are sure to
give them credit. You know, these ladies, they
kept cool heads. They were extremely competent.
(15:12):
These operations rooms could nothave been operated without them.
There were women who, as the radar station they were working
in, were being bombed. They stayed at their post long
after it was no longer safe, because they knew that if they
could get just a little bit moreinformation in land about the
attack that was coming, the fighter command would be able to
muster the correct number of planes, the pilots would know it
(15:33):
was coming, and fewer bombers would get through.
So these women exhibited extraordinary courage.
People are unsung heroes, these people who did the work on the
ground. Yep, I wish we knew some of
their names, but I don't think many of them are known.
But there were many. I was quite surprised by how
many there were. Anyway, back to the movie.
The English are pleased by Hitler's delay after.
(15:55):
Taking her for France and they are using it to their advantage,
though dining is very clear about the challenge that is in
front of them because Germany has many, many more aircraft
than the British do. And there's a little back and
forth between the government minister and Downing what
they're talking about. Are you praying to God and
(16:18):
trusting in radar? And Downing replies, I'm
trusting in God. I'm praying for radar.
That's right, this system had never been used in warfare
before. They're about to find out if it
works. The Germans at this point, they
had seen the Dunkirk evacuation.And when the British evacuated
at Dunkirk, they left by the skin of their teeth, right?
Like they left a whole bunch of equipment behind, tanks, like
(16:39):
you name it. And so the Germans perhaps
rightly saw this as a route. And they figured the British are
going to need, you know, they're, they're in shambles
right now. So Germany took its time
preparing for its British offensive.
They left the British like a month of breathing room until
July 10th when they started their attacks in earnest.
There's this weird sort of disconnect and intelligence
between the two countries because of course at the time
(17:01):
you can't text spy reports back and forth, right?
It's like, difficult. The Germans did try and
parachute spies into Britain, but they almost always got
caught immediately. It was a tough a tough Rd. a
hoe. And so the Germans didn't have
great information. They believed rumors and sketchy
intelligence about civil unrest in Britain, and they thought it
was possible that the British government would even collapse
(17:23):
after the Dunkirk evacuation. And so they just thought they
had all the time in the world. To me, that feels like a weird,
weird thing to believe after you've just seen the British
people rescue their own man in their boats.
Like, that's not the sound of unrest, that's the sound of
right. Prior to the war, there had
been, you know, Oswald Mosley and British fascist.
(17:44):
And so the Germans had heard about that kind of stuff, and
they thought perhaps that the British were more conflicted
than they were. But this happened throughout the
war, right? I mean, both sides were
convinced that they were going to be able to bomb each other's
cities and destroy each other's morale.
And of course, we know that thathad completely the opposite
effect. If anything, it made people keep
calm and carry on even more. Squadron Leader Canfield, played
(18:09):
by Michael Caine, is introduced to us as he's trying to track
down a missing pilot who will turn up later having been fished
out of the channel. This movie has a dreadful case
of all these white guys look thesame, so I really wasn't able to
keep track of a lot of the different pilots, but we'll do
our best. Meanwhile, Harvey, our Canadian,
has been reassigned to Scotland and he wants his wife, section
(18:31):
Officer Maggie Harvey, played bySusannah York.
She's a wolf who works on the air base.
He wants her to apply for reassignment to go with him, but
she's not keen. She's like, well, my job here is
really important. Like I want to actually, you
know, do it. And she kept.
Like putting off making the position too.
And I don't think she ever makesit in the movie.
She's just like, no, do it. I promise I'll do it.
(18:51):
And then the roof is over. Yeah, the Wasps who worked in
Fighter Command could be found in radar stations and operations
rooms, compiling and analyzing data from across the defense
system and plotting and mapping aircraft positions.
A ground control interception unit had a controller and were
operators. The operators were usually
wafts, and increasingly so were the controllers after 1941, and
(19:12):
over 1/4 of a million women served in the WAFT, so pretty
impressive. I love the scenes in the control
room with all the women. I feel like this movie has more
women doing stuff than Masters of the Air does, which I think
is kind of damn. It's kind of damning to be 50
years on and have less room in your show.
(19:33):
I know, brutal. This is the passage from the
book that really reminded me that it was written in 1961.
Control rooms were largely dependent on the WAFF.
In the heat of battle. They were brave and their
services were invaluable. When the fighting began to get
tough and the language of the pilot started to match it,
senior officers tried moving thegirls beyond the earshot of the
control room loud speakers. It was not idle swearing,
(19:55):
however, but the voices of men fighting for their lives.
The girls refused to leave theirjobs and said they did not mind
the language as. Much as the men thought.
Oh man, not the women. Protect their ears.
Just the fact that he calls themthe girls several times.
I'm like bro. Yeah, but then they did put them
all in the Murphy. They did.
(20:15):
It was nice to see them and you know, you actually got to see
them doing their jobs. They weren't just like set
decoration. No, exactly.
So the movie kind of moves on a little bit.
August 13th, 1914, also known asEagle Day.
So in July, the Germans had mostly focused on mine laying in
the Channel in the North Sea andtargeting convoys and shipping.
(20:39):
But after the beginning of August, much of the battle moved
over to the islands itself, so it was a real shift in the way
they were conducting the war. We watched the Germans as they
target many airfields and tried to knock out the RAF on the
ground because they say even a Spitfire can't be in two places
(21:03):
at once. And this is where I find they
make them a little bit silly. The Germans, because they say it
in such a giddy ride. I'm like, really, I'm just going
to make them look kind of stupid, but I guess.
The crazy thing is that that quote is a real quote.
It also appeared in the book. Yeah, so the Germans did.
(21:23):
I really, really like the Spitfire and I think they were
like very afraid of that plan because it was quite a bit
faster, I think, and was better at turning and all that stuff.
They each had their own. The ME1O Nines were better at
climbing and diving, and the Spitfires were better at
turning. And I think they had a
comparable speed. But but yeah, I mean, the
(21:47):
Spitfire has really captured thepopular imagination, right?
Like it's, it's the, it's the fighter plane of World War Two
in a lot of people's minds. Yeah, I do feel like the movie
is trying to make that clear. To you too.
Because the Germans mention it like maybe 3 * a great Spitfire
tour. So obviously it's a British
movie, so maybe that's why. But you know.
(22:07):
So in the scene we also see morerefs doing their very important
jobs in the control room. I love these scenes.
They are the best. In the same scene, we see that
two of the British radar stations are knocked out of
action. In a very very.
Metic explosion and this means that the RAF is to rely on the
(22:28):
observer cord as I mentioned before and some airfields were
heavily damaged, but the casualties are light, so not too
many people died, but we do see a lot of explosions.
Yeah, lots of practical effects.I did particularly enjoy
watching that hangar blow up. That's also the scene where we
see all the ladies, right? The rafts on the base, I
(22:50):
believe. Don't remember, I'll take your
word for it. Maybe anyway.
It's a scene where we see you have his wife on the base and
she's working with, I'm guessinga superior officer or man, and
he reminds her that. I think it's like something to
do with the gas mask and he reminds her that they are meant
(23:12):
for the gas mask, not as a handbag.
Which I thought was a really shitty remark to milk.
Yeah. I mean, I won't say that the
presentation of women in this movie is perfect.
There's another scene where she lights a cigarette where she's
not supposed to, etcetera. But I mean.
Is what it is. 1969. And that's true.
So on Eagle Day, up to this point, the Germans and the
(23:34):
British are flying maybe a few 100 sorties a day.
Like a sortie is a mission. If you were a fighter pilot, you
would fly, you know, we talked about this in our Pure Classroom
and episode. You might fly two or three
missions a day. You wouldn't always just be 1
and done. The Germans flew 1485 sorties on
Eagle Day, which is quite a lot more than they had up to that
time. Two days later, they flew 1786
(23:57):
sorties on August 15th and the following day 1715.
So this is a market uptick. Pilot's life expectancy at this
point was just 87 flying hours. Only a couple of days, then
that's not great. Further German attacks on the
southern English airfields occurfor the end seven days.
So we see a lot of air battles and dark fights, and the dark
(24:19):
fights are really, really awesome.
Then Canfield, played by MichaelCaine, he shot down.
And you're like, no, not Canfield.
Because Canfield has a dog on the base.
And after he shot down, we get out like a little glimpse of his
dog looking sad. I was mostly sad he was shot
down because he was one of the few people I recognized from
(24:40):
scene to scene because I was like, it's Michael Caine.
Yeah, that's true. That's maybe 3 recognizable
people in this movie. That's Christopher Plummer, a
cocaine. And there's another blonde guy
that we couldn't find out his name, but his name is just
Squadron Leader Skipper, which is just a like a general name
and he's blonde and kind of interesting looking.
(25:03):
But other than that, everybody looks the same.
Yeah. So in real life, around this
point, the Germans begin to makea succession of strategic
errors. And this point, Goering makes
the mistake of ordering that theLuftwaffe are going to take the
focus off of attacking radar stations because it's pretty
tough to damage them. It's really easy to focus on
(25:25):
hitting, for example, the very visible aerial tower.
But the bulk of what makes a radar station work is what is in
the buildings that are on and under the ground.
And so the Germans were finding that even though they bombed
them a whole bunch, they were not taking them out of service.
But I mean, realistically, right?
Like this is how the British know when you're coming, so they
probably should have kept up a focus on that, but they decided
(25:48):
not to. The commanding officer of RAF 11
Group, and this is a fighter group catching the bulk of the
ship from the Germans because 11Group covers London and
surrounding area. And so they're very busy as you
can imagine. His name's Keith Park and he's
played by Trevor Howard. And this commanding officer of
RAF 12 Group, which is the groupthat gets called on to reinforce
(26:11):
11 Group quite a lot, this is Trafford Lee Mallory, played by
Patrick Wymark. These two are at odds over the
proper technique for countering German attacks.
So Lee Mallory of 12 Group, he has this big wing tactic, calls
it, and he thinks that the best way of cantering German attacks
is if you assemble 40 to 50 aircraft at 15,000 feet.
However, Park says this is superunwieldy.
(26:34):
It takes a long time. It's difficult to get 40 to 50
aircraft to be able to fly in sequence.
Like you're spending a lot of time getting that many planes
into formation. And at that point the bombers
are getting through. And this was a real life major
conflict. I don't know if this specific
conversation happened, but thesetwo guys were definitely
loggerheads about it, and doubting would end up getting in
(26:56):
trouble a little bit later because he didn't resolve this
issue satisfactorily while he was in command.
But in the movie, he points out the real problem here is lack of
pilots. He's like, well, it doesn't
really matter what formations wefly if we don't have enough
guys. And this conflict eventually
cost Keith Park, the CEO of RAF 11 Group, his command, though he
later was shifted to a command at Malta in 1942 and he proved
(27:20):
the results of his smaller squadron approach.
Thankfully, otherwise he would have had a shitty rest of his
career probably. I do like.
Lawrence Olivia is down in this.I thought he was interesting and
also kind of pessimistic the entire movie.
For sure. Everyone else is like, oh, I'll
fix that. And he's like, with whose
(27:41):
pilots? But they do have a secret weapon
which they are reluctant to use,which is the foreign pilots that
we'll get to in a bit. So this is a bit of a turning
point in a war. We get to see a squadron of
German bombers. They are lost in bed, weather at
night, and they accidentally jettison their bombs are from
(28:02):
London and the RAF enemy Italianspy attacking Berlin.
And this is kind of the accidental start of the bloom.
Yeah, it's definitely the catalyzing event.
I think the official, quote, UN quote start of the Blitz is
September 7th. That's when the Germans really
start the daylight attacks in earnest.
But yeah, the German bombers, they jettison their bombs over
(28:23):
London and the Germans have beenbombing the outskirts of London,
but this is, you know, they're trapping bombs right in the
middle. And this happens on the 24th of
August. And the RAF retaliates the next
night on the 25th. And the British intended to hit
industrial communications targets, but they also had bad
weather. And this led to a lot of non
military targets being hit. Big oops.
(28:43):
Yeah. So of course, as you can
imagine, Hitler is not very happy about this.
We get to see him making a big, frothy, angry speech because
what World War 2 movie would be complete without that?
And he retaliates. And this is a second strategic
error by the Germans because instead of focusing on getting
rid of the airfields and taking out the RAF, which has been the
goal up to this point, they givethe airfields a break and they
(29:06):
bomb London instead. And Herman Goering, played by
Hein Rees, is still convinced that the Germans have the
British against the ropes. They really have this sense in
their minds because they're getting these these crazy
reports, right? They're hearing that they're
Downing 70 British planes at a time.
And we just, we know that that'snot correct.
And that's pretty frequently thereports of fighter squadrons
(29:26):
would be wrong because many reasons.
You know, if I hit a plane and you hit a plane and we both
claim it, that's twice as many planes as actually went down.
So he's still convinced the British are are really taking
it. Will will ramp up the pressure.
And on September 7th, 1940, we see him turn up at Pas de Calais
on the French coast to command the daytime assault on London.
(29:46):
This. Portrayal of Hammer girl.
He's such a. They make him such a.
Clown. I can't take him seriously, but
we know he was pretty, like, notclowny.
Goering was a World War One fighter ace.
And obviously. Big supporter of Hitler's and
quite powerful in the Reich. At one point he just had so many
(30:09):
different job titles it makes you wonder how was he good at
carrying out any of them. But because he had flown a World
War One, right, which was reallythe first conflict where
airplanes actually featured, he wasn't a big technology guy.
All of his thoughts about strategy were pretty out of date
and he wasn't really interested in learning more.
And had that not been the case, the Germans strategy and tactics
(30:32):
might have been different. So there is another pilot that
we've kind of seen around. His name is Andy, and he's
played by Ian McShane. This is one of the finance I
could actually recognize becausehe's got quite a distinctive
mock of black hair. So yeah, someone I know.
But he returns to London and leave, and he discovers that his
(30:55):
wife and children, who he had sent away to the country, have
returned to London. And he's not very pleased about
it, but he gives his kids cute little Spitfire miniatures that
I want, please, thank you. And then there is a call for
volunteers to help get a family that's trapped by the bombing.
And he volunteers to go on it and he's fine.
(31:18):
Like he he does what he's supposed to do.
But then he gets back to the resting center that his wife and
his kids were staying it and finds out that it's been bombed
and they've died, which so sad. Why?
I guess I I struggled to care about these pilots that I barely
recognize, but I understand thatI'm supposed to.
(31:38):
I did recently see Ian McShane and I shitty horror movie with
that also had Renee Zellweger init and I was like, if you hear
the name Ian McShane, you might not picture a face in your mind,
but if you saw his face you would recognize him.
He's been in like a million things.
The RAF begins to train foreign pilots from German occupied
countries. This includes of course Poland
and Czechoslovakia. These pilots struggle a little
(32:01):
with the English language, but there's a funny scene where
they're being led by an English Squadron Leader and every time
he gives them instructions, theygo, what?
Say again? And he repeats the instruction
and they go, please, repeat say again.
And he says it again. And he's getting more and more
agitated. And then he realizes after like
the 6th or 7th say again that the polls are doing what he told
(32:22):
them to do. They're just fucking with him.
Anyway, I quite like that littlescene.
They prove their mettle when they brazenly attack and
unescorted group of bombers. And this is good because the new
British pilots coming up are very green.
You know, we see a scene where they're talking about this one
guy's like, Oh yeah, I have 8 hours of flight time on a
Spitfire or something thing which is, you know, not a lot of
(32:43):
time and often results in pilotsgetting killed before they can
even get battle experience. So.
Yeah, I feel like the other pilot, Jamie, has to lead those
pilots, and he's like, what the fuck?
Why am I getting these babies tolead?
Just stick by me and do what I tell you to do.
Burke and Darling discuss how the German strategic change from
(33:06):
mum in the airfields and airplane factories to bomb in
London will be beneficial. Because the RAF and recover and
the Germans don't have much further enough by the time they
get to London. This is to do with fuel and
stuff, right? So they can't really go anywhere
once they get there, and that's obviously a good thing.
Sure enough, the next time the Germans attack during the day,
(33:26):
they are routed by the RAF fighters.
So they're like there's one mother fuckers were right here
going orders the fighters to stay with the bombers, which is
not their purpose. They are supposed to be fighting
with the RAF but he doesn't stay.
But that leaves them vulnerable to be attack themselves.
(33:47):
So the Germans begin to lose a couple more planes.
Yeah. We see one of the German
officers snidely asking for an outfit of Spitfires for my
squadron. And this is based on Adolf
Gallant who was a World War 2 flying ace and flight group
commander who consulted on this movie.
And he did say that to growing at one point, supposedly out of
frustration at being given unmanageable orders.
(34:10):
And interestingly, I read that Gallon supposedly had some beef
with some of the movies depictions of the Germans.
Of course, he argued in particular that Operation Sea
Lion, which was the German plan to invade Britain, was actually
just the bluff to get the British to accept Hitler's peace
terms as it prepared to invade the Soviet Union.
And it was never a serious proposition, however.
(34:32):
I mean, the goal of the attacks on Britain was to ready it for
invasion and achieve air supremacy.
It was also to succeed at Goering's personal ambition of
destroying the RAF and bringing Britain down by air power alone.
He kept telling Hitler, oh, yeah, don't worry about it.
Like, you're barely going to need to invade.
I'm going to destroy everything that needs to be destroyed from
the air. You know, just wild hubris.
(34:54):
And the Germans were so confident that Operation C Line
would eventually go ahead once they had air superiority that
they deliberately left some southern English.
It's alone for use during the invasion. 13 German army
divisions had been moved to embarkation points on the French
coast, and there was a detailed plan in place for a landing.
There were over 1000 invasion craft massed in ports along the
channel, plus 600 more upriver and Antwerp.
(35:16):
So if it's a bluff like Gallon, just saying it's a pretty
fucking expensive bluff. Yeah, those are a lot of crafts,
and even all the way up to Antwerp.
So like that's another thing youdo in a day.
Like that's a rich. That's a rich.
Long operation outside. So and we move forward again on
(35:37):
September 15, 1940, the Luftwaffe makes its biggest and
most focused attack yet on London and at this point ever to
squadron is in the air with no reserves.
If they go down, that's it. They don't have any reserves and
the fighting is very heavy. Harvey is shot down and he's a
fight, but he's certainly wounded and burnt, which is
(36:00):
interesting because his wife Maggie, who had just not badly
burned Squadron Leader Evans, played by Dale Foxley, works off
when she years then her husband has been badly burned.
We're just kind of, I don't knowwhat to.
Think about this. She's like, I don't want to deal
with that. Maybe we don't know.
It's kind of left in the in the air, literally.
(36:20):
Squadron Leader Evans, played byBill Foxley.
Bill Foxley was a real World War2 veteran.
He, well, I don't know if it washim, but they crashed their
bomber during a training exercise in 1944.
And he actually escaped unharmed, but his crewmates were
still in the plane, so he went back to get them.
Three of them survived, including him out of six.
(36:41):
But he was quite badly burned. He needed something like 29
operations. If you look up a picture of this
guy, it's very, I mean, they given the medical technology at
the time, they really did their best.
Yeah. He went on to live a long life.
He talked about how when he would sit on the train to go
into town, people would always leave an empty seat next to him
because, you know, he's quite disfigured and people have
(37:04):
certain feelings about that. So yeah, that did make me a
little sad to read about. But I did think it was cool that
he got to be in this movie. As someone would Burns.
Like it's just kind of like justice to be in this movie, I
guess, after people just been ignoring you for looking at me.
Yeah, so in real life, after themassive daylight raid on London
on September 7th, which is sort of the unofficial start of the
(37:26):
Blitz, followed by another a week later on the 15th of
September, which is known as Battle of Britain Day in the UK.
Because I think that's when people started to get a sense
that the tides were turning. The Germans had to rethink their
strategy because it had started to become really clear that
Fighter Command was not as closeto the brink as they thought.
Hitler had to push back Operation Sea Lion until further
(37:48):
notice, and they shifted their focus back to trying to
obliterate the RAF again. Goering still believed it could
be done in four to five days, because that's what had happened
in Poland and France. But in those countries, there
hadn't really been a significantair defense to shatter, right?
So really, it doesn't make any sense why he would think that.
But he kept telling Hitler like,yeah, four or five days, we got
(38:08):
it. It's on lock.
No. In the movie, the next day,
everyone is geared up for another massive raid, but it
just doesn't happen. We get a scene where all the
pilots are sitting around outside in the sunshine.
This isn't parallel to a similarscene at the beginning, but in
the beginning everyone's kind ofjoking around, having a good
time. Now they're all, they've been
through too much shit, man. They're sitting there and
(38:30):
they're all pensive, gazing off into the middle distance.
And then across the channel we see the German air forces leave
the coast, furious, Gurring among them, hollering angrily
out the window. And subordinates.
I did like this, ending the clear skies after seeing all the
German fighters and the bombers in there before, and now it's
suddenly beautiful. I did like it does end quite
(38:51):
suddenly. I kind of wish we'd gotten to
see our Canadian, but I guess he's just somewhere being
disfigured. Yeah, and I mean, this whole
thing where they they route the Germans and then the Germans
never come back is obviously not100% accurate.
The Germans weren't defeated in one day like that.
On September 19th, Hitler ordered the assembly of the
(39:12):
invasion fleet to be stopped anddispersed because of course, if
you have a bunch of craft on theChannel, lots of opportunities
for the British to bomb the shitout of it, which was happening.
And a couple weeks later, on October 12th, he decided that he
would postpone Operation Sea Lion until at least the spring.
And of course, we know that it never ended up happening.
And daytime attacks by the Germans dwindled by the end of
October, so did take another month or so.
(39:35):
The movie closes on down and locking up with the sky as we
were just saying where the church aquatic.
There's never in the field of human conflict with so much.
Owed by so many to suffer. I do love this crowd.
It's a beautiful crowd. Epic quote.
Yeah, Doubting lost his post in November of 1940.
(39:55):
About a month or so later, afterhe retired in 1942, supposedly
they asked him to write an official report of the battle.
Written, which was never published Instead, the Air
Ministry wrote its own history without even mentioning his
name. There are several reasons for
this. At that point the British were
turning to offense instead of defense.
Of course, now they're no longerhaving to defend their own
(40:16):
island. So it's going to be less
predominantly focused on FighterCommand.
Now it's going to be a bit more focused on Bomber Command
because now they're trying to goout and bomb the Germans.
Not necessarily his specialty. So he was removed from that
post. Also, they were upset that he
had taken CEO Park's side more or less in the big wing debate,
(40:37):
and he hadn't ended up resolvingthat.
And it had caused a lot of problems and tension in the
fighter commands during the Battle of Britain.
And he also had a few political enemies.
And so he lost his job. And initially there was a bit of
a shadow over his name, but Churchill stood up for him and
so his reputation has been somewhat restored, I think.
I mean, I would say I don't knowa lot.
(40:58):
About him other than what I've just seen in this movie, but I.
Think it's on a. Route just to not mention him at
all and this entire report of his pets all like Dunning.
Who's that? Yeah, and then we get an end
card. I'm not going to read all of
this because it's just a bunch of numbers and y'all aren't
going to remember anyways. But we got an end card that says
(41:19):
in tribute to the Allied pilots who took part in the Battle of
Britain. And then it lists where the
pilots were from and how many participated and how many were
killed. So of course the RAF and other
Commonwealth, there was also theFleet Air Arm of the Navy, so
they also contributed pilots. And of course we have
Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians, S Africans, Southern
Rhodesians, Irish, American, Polish, Czech, Belgian, Free
(41:41):
French, and they've listed one Israeli pilot.
Israel did not exist yet when this happened, I believe it was.
A. British man who was just born in
the British Mandate of Palestine.
But regardless that gets mentioned.
There's also a card that shows German losses during the Battle
of Britain, and these were estimates available at the time,
but subsequent research has demonstrated most of them are
(42:03):
grossly overestimated for the reasons we talked about before.
Pilots just tend to be not very accurate when they report how
many planes they've shot down. But bomber crews, 1176 killed in
action, Stoka crews, Stokos, those are the dive bombers, 85
killed in action. Fighter bomber crews 212 killed
in action, Fighter pilots 171 killed in action and missing
crews 1445. I suspect those missing crews
(42:27):
were killed in action. Most likely they are drowned,
like a lot of them would just end up in the drunk.
Right. And and up until pretty deep
into the Battle of Britain, the British in particular didn't
have a great system coordinated for fishing airmen out of the
Channel. This was something that they
(42:48):
hastily had to develop on the fly.
Yeah, and that's right. I didn't even finish watching
the end card, so I'll be honest with you, it's kind of done.
I was like, oh, this movies do alot.
Yeah, it definitely started to feel that way a little bit,
yeah. This movie used 100 real
(43:13):
aircraft, making it the 35th largest Air Force in the world
at the time. As you can imagine, in 1969, I
don't know how effective of an Air Force it would have been
with a lot of World War 2 planes, but nevertheless, it
gives you some idea of the size.And I was reading a little bit
about this and it's so interesting.
So if they didn't have a make and model of Spitfire or Mr.
(43:35):
Schmidt that was available in the summer or in fall of 1940,
they might use a later model andrepaint it or tweak it a little
bit. Same thing if they didn't have a
particular bomber, they would take a bomber that they did have
and they would kind of rejig it or film it from certain angles
or add little bits and pieces toit to make it look like a make
and model that it wasn't. So I thought that was really
(43:57):
cool to read about all the work they put into that.
They also used radio. What do you call it?
Like miniatures? Yeah, like like remote
controlled planes. Yeah, they like I would want to
go nuts. Yeah, it's pretty cool.
And they really made the most of, you know, if they.
So the two British fighter planes that were predominantly
(44:19):
used were the Hurricane and the Spitfire.
And though the Spitfire has captured the popular
imagination, there were more Hurricanes and Spitfires used,
and the Spitfires were faster. So they would take on the
fighter planes and then the Hurricanes would take on the
bomber. So that's kind of how the
separation of duties worked out.But anyway, so they had a few
hurricanes that they had gotten for the movie, and some of them
(44:41):
could only taxi. They couldn't actually fly.
So you'll see a shot of some hurricanes taxiing by and of
course, just out of frame, they're not really taking off up
into the air, but it looks real while you're watching it.
Smart movie making. There is a movie called
Hurricane. I think it's about Polish
pilots. I think we should watch it.
Yeah. For sure, down the operations
room used in the film is the real operations room for #11
(45:03):
Fighter Command, which as we mentioned, was the group of
Fighter Command getting the mostbattering during the Battle of
Britain. You can actually visit it today
at RAF Oxbridge. It's a little museum, so that's
kind of cool. Neat.
I would love to go there sometime.
I have to get back to the UK at some point, yeah.
For sure. There is a sequence in one of
the aerial battles where a pilotplayed by Edward Fox takes down
(45:25):
a badly damaged bomber which crashes spectacularly into a
railway station. And rather than really
remembering what the pilots doing, I mean in my memory
anyway, you mostly remember the practical effects.
You're like cool big explosion. But the pilot is based on a real
guy named Ray Holmes, who on the15th of September 1940 rammed
his Hurricane into a bomber overLondon when his guns locked up
(45:46):
and he had no other way of taking it down.
Holmes survived and was praised as a hero.
Of course, his plane rammed intothe ground at 350 mph to the
point where they couldn't get itout, so they just left it there
until May 2004. And he was there as an honorary
guest when it had to be moved tomake way for a new water main.
(46:06):
He. Survived.
Wow. Yeah, I believe he, yeah.
Thank God a number of subsequentfilms, including Midway which
came out in 1976, borrowed stockfootage from this movie and we
have discussed potentially covering Midway pretty soon, so
keep an eye out for that. And Michael Caine's spoken cameo
in Dunkirk, the 2017 movie whichwe have covered, so go check
(46:28):
that out as a Spitfire pilot, isa little nod to his role in this
movie. Yes, I love microphone.
I'm certainly died in this one. Yeah, I mean, Michael Caine,
Laurence Olivier, there's some, there's a pretty stacked cast.
Christopher Plummer. Yep, if only their characters
had a little more character to them, that would have been
great. Could have used a little more
(46:49):
meat for sure. Yeah, well, I think we should
get to. Write in this movie and I had a
fabulous idea for writing this because.
There's a lot of mentions and visual stuff about tea in this
movie, so I think we should write it.
At least there's tea I've done. It's true.
That really seems to be the epitome, the symbol of the
(47:11):
British stiff upper lip. The keep calm and carry on.
They're like, well, you know what?
We're getting the ship on that of us make a cuppa.
Like there open some roof in London I think and there's some
guy over the teapot. Yeah.
You go first, you ready first. All right, I would give this
movie 6. At least there's teas out of 10.
It's, I'm just, it really captures my imagination that
(47:33):
they use so many real planes from World War 2 and that they
use practical effects. And the aerial combat scenes
look really cool. I mean, if you're into that, I
definitely recommend watching them.
There were some little funny moments.
The acting was pretty good. I liked that they showed the wax
and they gave us one with a namewho had things to do.
And despite the fact that I found the book dry, I did learn
(47:53):
a ton of stuff. It was like taking a crash
course, man. Like there was no narrative in
this book. It was like you're going to
learn some fucking facts about the Battle of Britain.
So buckle in. And I did.
I know more about liquid cooled versus air cooled engines than I
ever desired or even thought that I could know.
But yeah, that said, it is a little lengthy.
It's kind of dry in places, and they didn't do a great job of
(48:14):
pulling the narrative together. It's really just like, here's
what happened and then this and then this and then this.
And so it's not a terrifically interesting watch, unless you're
someone who likes when history movies are almost documentary
like, in which case then this isthe movie for you.
What did you think? I also want to write this six at
least, or she's out of town because like you, I find the
(48:37):
subject matter quite interesting.
And I didn't know a lot about it.
And it's a good like, entry point into learning more about
the Battle of Britain. But as a movie, it's not very
interesting. It's like, it's OK, it's not a
waste of time, but it's also notwhen I'd watch again.
So short and sweet for me, I think.
(49:04):
Are you reading anything? I am in fact reading something
again. I got back into Mission Europe
by GATE figures, which is about the SRE in Europe in different
countries. And it's.
Super interesting. I really like reading about the
SRE. How about you?
What have you been up to since you're super dry?
(49:24):
Burke, the narrow margin. I took a little break from World
War 2 and I've just just finished.
I finished it last night. Utica the life and legends of
britains warrior queen by Vanessa calling Ridge.
I think similar to the Battle ofBritain, Butica looms pretty
large in the British imaginationas you know, warrior queen.
I suppose the book was interesting because they we
(49:46):
don't know a lot about her life,but the author gave a lot of
context about the history of theRoman Empire around that time,
what was happening, what life was like for the Celtic tribes
who are living in England. And also talked quite a lot
about her legacy and how that's impacted female monarchs and
female leaders since then. And, you know, the impact that
(50:08):
she's had on the popular imagination.
Yeah, it was pretty interesting.Yeah, I love that.
Well, that's it for this week. Thank you everybody for
listening. You can find us wherever you get
your podcasts and read those five stars.
Please do read Love that you cansend this episode to your friend
who needs to learn more about about the midway and not midway
(50:28):
about the. Midway on the brain, there's
going to be planes on that too. Stop it, you're making me laugh.
You can send this episode to your friend who needs to learn
more about the Battle of Britainlike we did.
You can follow us on Instagram at Rosydera Viewer Podcast, or
you can visit ourwebsite@rosyderaviewer.com
(50:50):
and we'll see you next week. Bye.
Welcome to Rosie the Reviewer. We're your host.
I'm Sam. And I'm married to.
And we like World War 2 media and we want to talk about it.
Welcome back to Rosideo reviewer.
This week we are covering the Battle of Britain, which came
out in 1969, so a little while ago.
(00:23):
It's a film directed by Guy Hamilton and written by James
Kenaway and Wilford Greater Acts.
It's based on a book called The Narrow Margin, The Battle of
Britain and the Rise of Airpowerfrom 1930 to 19. 49.
That book came out in 1961 by Jerick Wood and Derek Dempster.
(00:45):
They sure do like the Dereks over there.
The movie attempts to faithfullydepict real life figures
involved in the Battle of Britain underground and over the
skies for Great Britain in 1940.And if you're wondering, there
are many, many, many, many, manycharacters and you will forget
all of them because they are notvery distantive.
(01:05):
You can watch this if you want. You probably should.
It's on Amazon Prime. What did you think of that song?
I don't think they really make movies like this anymore.
There's not really a central character or group of
characters. They made the attempt, I guess,
but mostly it's kind of this documentary style.
(01:27):
Here's what happened during the Battle of Britain.
Here's. The.
Central figures. Here's what they were talking
about. A guy might pop up and never pop
up again, and it hasn't really been streamlined in any way, and
you're just supposed to be able to kind of follow along.
I think they assume the audiencehas quite a lot of context
already, and based on when it came out, they're probably
(01:47):
right. I thought the aerial combat
scenes were pretty cool. This is a period, of course,
when they would have been able to use a lot of real planes.
They would have used a lot of practical effects, and the
results is kind of neat to watch, especially because given
the passage of time, there will never be another World War 2
aerial battle filmed with all ofthese actual planes, with all
(02:10):
these practical effects. Of course we would use what's
available now, we would use CGI,etcetera.
So I enjoyed that and I also liked that there was female main
character was stuff to do. The Women's Auxiliary Air Force
was quite a major part of the Battle of Britain and they did
attempt to show them in this movie.
They also got some accolades in the book which I read and so I
(02:31):
did enjoy that aspect. I will say that I found the book
very technical. If you're really interested in
makes and models of airplanes and types of engines and how
many of each make and model weremanufactured in which year, then
you'll enjoy the book. And the back half of the book is
essentially a day by day accountof the Battle of Britain, what
(02:52):
got bombed and how many planes were lost on each side, how many
sorties were flown. So it's very thoroughly
researched, very exhaustive. I did learn a lot.
It was a little dry, and I foundthat dryness translated into the
movie. What did you think of it?
I think you're pretty much already summed it up.
I didn't know a lot about the Battle of Britain, strangely,
(03:12):
but I do know so they've done a good job in educating me and I
am curious to see maybe other movies depicting this battle
with maybe a little bit more storytelling.
I didn't care particularly much about many of the characters
because a lot of them are like higher ups and brass, and even
the characters that weren't necessarily based on real
(03:35):
people, they didn't have that many interesting things to do.
So I don't know. It's good, but it's not great.
I thought it was quite long and I feel like I lacked the context
that they are kind of assuming you have going into the movie.
So in the beginning I was like, what's happening?
Where are we, what's going on? But it got slightly better as
(03:59):
the movie progressed. And I did have, I think, real
Germans in this, which was wrong.
But I don't know if I would watch it again.
Probably not. So overall the music made me
laugh, though the music is fun. It's like really old timey
fanfare music. Yeah, definitely.
(04:19):
I think I read somewhere that the original music for the movie
was even more patriotic and our glorious war, and then they
redid it before the movie came out.
I think that was this movie thatI read that about.
But yeah, actually, like you said, this movie is kind of like
Tora Tora Tora, the movie that we covered about Pearl Harbor,
where you get the Japanese perspective and the American
(04:42):
perspective. This movie was kind of like
that. We did get to see what the
Germans were doing and what the brass were talking about on
their side as well. And the book does cover that.
It's ostensibly just a history of the Battle of Britain.
It's not supposed to be from theBritish perspective, but you can
really tell that the two authorsare British.
Well, I think one of the most born elsewhere in the Empire,
(05:02):
but he did come to Britain and join the RAF.
That's quite clear to me from the book.
Like for example I had previously read that the British
British really underestimated the Germans radar ability early
in the war for probably too longwith disastrous results, and in
this book they presented it the other way around.
So I just thought it was interesting that you can tell
(05:23):
who wrote it and what their motivations are.
I feel like that's also true forthe.
Movie because the Germans are a little bit silly sometimes.
For sure. Yeah, definitely.
Anyway, let's get into it because we have a lot of notes.
Here's the plot. So we start in France in May
(05:48):
1940. A plane which is piloted by
Jamie, played by James Cosmo, does a victory role over a group
of French refugees fleeing Parisand his quadrant leader, Colin
Harvey, played by Christopher Plummer.
Lemeri Dashing doesn't really like it that he does that and he
he kind of chews them out for it.
(06:08):
And also, he's Canadian. Yes, very excited to see not
only Christopher Plummer, who ofcourse is Canadian, but also
he's playing an RCAF pilot, so that's nice.
And as we open the scene, we seethat the British pilots in the
area have to evacuate. Because the Germans are coming
(06:29):
and they have to destroy any planes that they can't take but
them. Which is a shame.
Would like hurt me to see them throw gasoline on these
beautiful Spitfires and hurricanes.
Yeah, because they. Of course, after many aerial
battles they would have planes that weren't airworthy and you
don't want the technology to fall into German hands.
May 19th 1940 is the date more or less when most British
(06:52):
squadrons evacuated as the German army rushed towards them.
The last squadrons didn't leave until the Dunkirk evacuation was
complete. But this is kind of the the mark
of the British going fuck. We have underestimated the scale
of the problem. Better pack up and go home and
ready ourselves for what comes next.
It's funny to me that the battlewas ultimately won by the
(07:15):
British because the Germans did have larger numbers and not by a
little like. By a lot.
So. But I guess you can never
underestimate the British either, which is what I think
did happen. Yeah, there is.
And I mean, there were some issues with German leadership.
Well, we'll get into all of it, I suppose.
So the British Expeditionary Force who had come to France to
(07:39):
support the French, Belgian and Dutch people when they were
invaded by the Germans, they're evacuating at Dunkirk.
This is a disastrous situation. Hundreds of thousands of
soldiers on the beach. France is about to capitulate to
the Germans. We get a scene where Air Chief
Marshall Sir Hugh Dowding, played by Laurence Olivier.
By the way, he's important because he's going to serve as
(08:00):
the air officer commanding of the Royal Air Force Fighter
Command during the upcoming Battle of Britain.
So we get introduced to him here, and he's explaining how
he's prioritizing home defense over sending more planes across
the Channel. And this decision by doubting is
true to life. The Germans achieved air
superiority over the obsolete and underprepared French Air
Force, supported by squadrons ofthe British Royal Air Force in
(08:22):
about two days. And the British continue to send
additional squadrons, but they ended up losing a ream of their
best pilots in the process, US and 25% of their total
interceptor strength. So Doubting wrote to the Under
Secretary of State at the War Ministry towards the end of the
Battle of France, saying basically if we lose in France,
that defeat will involve the final, complete and irremediable
(08:42):
defeat of this country as well. So we get to see him make that
decision in real time in the movie.
And then we get a Churchill quote from June 18th, 1940,
where he says the Battle of France is over, the Battle of
Britain is about to begin, and the name of the book upon which
this movie is based. The narrow margin also comes
from a Churchill quote. He had said all the great
struggles of history have been won by superior willpower.
(09:05):
Sting victory in the teeth of odds or upon the narrowest of
margins. It's such a bombastic.
Card isn't it? I'm like, what does this mean?
Yeah, he's, you know, Churchill.He's a, he's a little full of
himself sometimes, you know, he's, he's full of hot air.
Larger than life. And Doubting was actually one of
several participants in the Battle of Britain who consulted
(09:26):
on this movie. He also visited I think the set
of his office that was recreatedto look exactly the same I
think, which I think is pretty neat.
Yeah, they do have a lot of attention to detail in this
movie. If it can be historically
accurate, it more or less is. We were just a lift buffer.
Make preparations to interpret by air and we are at the British
(09:50):
Embassy in Switzerland, where the British ambassador Sir David
Kelly, played by Rolf Richardson, and the German
ambassador, Baron von Leisler, played by Kurt Jurgens, discuss
how Germany. Really doesn't want to invade
Britain, but they will person doesn't let them do what they
want on the continent, he says. Europe is ours.
(10:11):
The sea was kind of funny to me because the.
The British ambassadors just like how many sugars do you want
in your tea again, is it 2 and. It made me laugh.
Yeah, it's funny, this diplomacyon the eve of warfare, right?
And I mean, Hitler really did respect the British, but I don't
think if you're Germany who has taken over the bulk.
Of the continent you can risk, you know, having the British at
(10:33):
your back. Undefeated, especially if your
next plan is to potentially takeon the Soviets.
Exactly. And then as the Baron leaves, we
do see David Kelly kind of saying to you, I don't know, his
secretary, maybe, I don't remember, but that they are in
trouble. He doesn't say it to the Baron,
but he does say it behind close doors.
(10:54):
Yeah, now it's June 1940. We see air sector controllers
being trained on how to guide planes in the air.
So this would be when you have squadrons of planes being
scrambled, you need to be able to guide them to intersection
points when the enemy is coming so you can cut them off.
And we see some pilots undergoing additional training.
So this is all the preparations on the British side.
Meanwhile, in Germany, the Germans are yucking it up
(11:17):
because they think the radar masks on the English coast are
just radio direction finders. But the British actually had
developed quite a cohesive framework for air defense
throughout the 1930s. They didn't really get caught,
you know, with their pants down or anything.
Robert Watson Watt was a scientist, and he had worked on
high frequency radio and atmospheric research.
And in 1932, he drafted a reportthat basically said if an
(11:39):
aircraft meets a shortwave radiopulse, it'll reflect a signal
back to the ground. And you can measure that time
lag between the reflection and hitting the ground in
microseconds. And if you have a time base, the
distance between the aircraft from the radio station can then
be measured. And he wasn't the first person
to discover this, but he was thefirst person to kind of develop
it for this purpose. And so A-Team, led by Watson
(12:01):
Watts, successfully use radio waves to detect aircraft for the
first time in 19, 1935. And this was the basis for the
radar system that the British would build over the ensuing
five years. They constructed all these radar
bases along the coast, and thesewere used to detect incoming
attacks from across the English Channel, but they were blind to
their rear, which is where the rest of this defense system
comes in. So after the radar alerts that
(12:23):
the enemy planes are coming, information then gets passed to
the observer corps inland. And these are literally people
in buildings, on hilltops, in fields.
This is a very manual exercise and they would track and pass on
information about numbers of planes, altitude, trajectory,
all this stuff to one another and ultimately on to the
operations rooms of fighting sectors.
(12:44):
So the whole time that planes are in British airspace, the
British are tracking them and they know where they're going
and how many of them there are and what's going on for the most
part. And then once they get this
information to the operations rooms of the fighting sectors,
they can use these complex for the time radio technology and
manual triangulation, and they can direct their own squadrons
(13:06):
to intercept these enemy attacks.
In particular, they had a navigation system called
Pipsqueak, which used high frequency direction finding
receivers to allow the British to plot the direction of their
own fighters. Because the pilots used to have
to use dead reckoning, they really had no way of knowing
where they were supposed to be going beyond manual navigation.
And this also made it easier forthe planes to be successfully
(13:28):
guided back to base. So it was a big deal.
And the Germans, perhaps becausetheir own efforts were focused
predominantly on offense, they really did not have, you know, a
vast sense of system of defense setup because they didn't think
they were potentially going to need it.
They had little notion of the complexity of the British
defense system that they were taking on.
They knew the British had radar,but they believed it rudimentary
compared to their own systems sounds.
(13:49):
Familiar, doesn't it? Because that's also what they
thought about. Enigma and whatever else there
was going on in the British and elite side.
So I feel like. They underestimate their enemy
quite extensively throughout thewar.
Yeah, definitely a problem for sure for them.
I do like that this movie kind of shows here the entire chain
(14:09):
from radar to the control room to the inland people like you
see all of them. That's quite interesting.
I don't think modern movies would do that anymore.
So it's quite nice to see the entire chain and.
It's wild to think about now, right?
But I mean, you would have to, if I'm in one area and I see, I
don't know, 20 planes going overhead and I know what
(14:30):
direction they're going. And I got to call you in your
area and be like, I'm seeing allthese planes, keep an eye out
for them. And you're like, hey, I'm going
to watch and you're going to seewhere they're coming, and you're
going to track that information.And we're all going to know
where the planes are. I mean, nowadays we have the
technology. We don't have to do this.
This was a very complex system that involved a lot of people
having to be good at their jobs.And also not get shocked.
(14:50):
In the meantime. Well, for sure, I mean, the
we're going to talk more about the Women's Auxiliary Air Force,
the the wafts, as they call themin a bit.
These were ladies who worked quite extensively in these
control rooms. And literally there would be
points where I mean, and in the book, the authors are sure to
give them credit. You know, these ladies, they
kept cool heads. They were extremely competent.
(15:12):
These operations rooms could nothave been operated without them.
There were women who, as the radar station they were working
in, were being bombed. They stayed at their post long
after it was no longer safe, because they knew that if they
could get just a little bit moreinformation in land about the
attack that was coming, the fighter command would be able to
muster the correct number of planes, the pilots would know it
(15:33):
was coming, and fewer bombers would get through.
So these women exhibited extraordinary courage.
People are unsung heroes, these people who did the work on the
ground. Yep, I wish we knew some of
their names, but I don't think many of them are known.
But there were many. I was quite surprised by how
many there were. Anyway, back to the movie.
The English are pleased by Hitler's delay after.
(15:55):
Taking her for France and they are using it to their advantage,
though dining is very clear about the challenge that is in
front of them because Germany has many, many more aircraft
than the British do. And there's a little back and
forth between the government minister and Downing what
they're talking about. Are you praying to God and
(16:18):
trusting in radar? And Downing replies, I'm
trusting in God. I'm praying for radar.
That's right, this system had never been used in warfare
before. They're about to find out if it
works. The Germans at this point, they
had seen the Dunkirk evacuation.And when the British evacuated
at Dunkirk, they left by the skin of their teeth, right?
Like they left a whole bunch of equipment behind, tanks, like
(16:39):
you name it. And so the Germans perhaps
rightly saw this as a route. And they figured the British are
going to need, you know, they're, they're in shambles
right now. So Germany took its time
preparing for its British offensive.
They left the British like a month of breathing room until
July 10th when they started their attacks in earnest.
There's this weird sort of disconnect and intelligence
between the two countries because of course at the time
(17:01):
you can't text spy reports back and forth, right?
It's like, difficult. The Germans did try and
parachute spies into Britain, but they almost always got
caught immediately. It was a tough a tough Rd. a
hoe. And so the Germans didn't have
great information. They believed rumors and sketchy
intelligence about civil unrest in Britain, and they thought it
was possible that the British government would even collapse
(17:23):
after the Dunkirk evacuation. And so they just thought they
had all the time in the world. To me, that feels like a weird,
weird thing to believe after you've just seen the British
people rescue their own man in their boats.
Like, that's not the sound of unrest, that's the sound of
right. Prior to the war, there had
been, you know, Oswald Mosley and British fascist.
(17:44):
And so the Germans had heard about that kind of stuff, and
they thought perhaps that the British were more conflicted
than they were. But this happened throughout the
war, right? I mean, both sides were
convinced that they were going to be able to bomb each other's
cities and destroy each other's morale.
And of course, we know that thathad completely the opposite
effect. If anything, it made people keep
calm and carry on even more. Squadron Leader Canfield, played
(18:09):
by Michael Caine, is introduced to us as he's trying to track
down a missing pilot who will turn up later having been fished
out of the channel. This movie has a dreadful case
of all these white guys look thesame, so I really wasn't able to
keep track of a lot of the different pilots, but we'll do
our best. Meanwhile, Harvey, our Canadian,
has been reassigned to Scotland and he wants his wife, section
(18:31):
Officer Maggie Harvey, played bySusannah York.
She's a wolf who works on the air base.
He wants her to apply for reassignment to go with him, but
she's not keen. She's like, well, my job here is
really important. Like I want to actually, you
know, do it. And she kept.
Like putting off making the position too.
And I don't think she ever makesit in the movie.
She's just like, no, do it. I promise I'll do it.
(18:51):
And then the roof is over. Yeah, the Wasps who worked in
Fighter Command could be found in radar stations and operations
rooms, compiling and analyzing data from across the defense
system and plotting and mapping aircraft positions.
A ground control interception unit had a controller and were
operators. The operators were usually
wafts, and increasingly so were the controllers after 1941, and
(19:12):
over 1/4 of a million women served in the WAFT, so pretty
impressive. I love the scenes in the control
room with all the women. I feel like this movie has more
women doing stuff than Masters of the Air does, which I think
is kind of damn. It's kind of damning to be 50
years on and have less room in your show.
(19:33):
I know, brutal. This is the passage from the
book that really reminded me that it was written in 1961.
Control rooms were largely dependent on the WAFF.
In the heat of battle. They were brave and their
services were invaluable. When the fighting began to get
tough and the language of the pilot started to match it,
senior officers tried moving thegirls beyond the earshot of the
control room loud speakers. It was not idle swearing,
(19:55):
however, but the voices of men fighting for their lives.
The girls refused to leave theirjobs and said they did not mind
the language as. Much as the men thought.
Oh man, not the women. Protect their ears.
Just the fact that he calls themthe girls several times.
I'm like bro. Yeah, but then they did put them
all in the Murphy. They did.
(20:15):
It was nice to see them and you know, you actually got to see
them doing their jobs. They weren't just like set
decoration. No, exactly.
So the movie kind of moves on a little bit.
August 13th, 1914, also known asEagle Day.
So in July, the Germans had mostly focused on mine laying in
the Channel in the North Sea andtargeting convoys and shipping.
(20:39):
But after the beginning of August, much of the battle moved
over to the islands itself, so it was a real shift in the way
they were conducting the war. We watched the Germans as they
target many airfields and tried to knock out the RAF on the
ground because they say even a Spitfire can't be in two places
(21:03):
at once. And this is where I find they
make them a little bit silly. The Germans, because they say it
in such a giddy ride. I'm like, really, I'm just going
to make them look kind of stupid, but I guess.
The crazy thing is that that quote is a real quote.
It also appeared in the book. Yeah, so the Germans did.
(21:23):
I really, really like the Spitfire and I think they were
like very afraid of that plan because it was quite a bit
faster, I think, and was better at turning and all that stuff.
They each had their own. The ME1O Nines were better at
climbing and diving, and the Spitfires were better at
turning. And I think they had a
comparable speed. But but yeah, I mean, the
(21:47):
Spitfire has really captured thepopular imagination, right?
Like it's, it's the, it's the fighter plane of World War Two
in a lot of people's minds. Yeah, I do feel like the movie
is trying to make that clear. To you too.
Because the Germans mention it like maybe 3 * a great Spitfire
tour. So obviously it's a British
movie, so maybe that's why. But you know.
(22:07):
So in the scene we also see morerefs doing their very important
jobs in the control room. I love these scenes.
They are the best. In the same scene, we see that
two of the British radar stations are knocked out of
action. In a very very.
Metic explosion and this means that the RAF is to rely on the
(22:28):
observer cord as I mentioned before and some airfields were
heavily damaged, but the casualties are light, so not too
many people died, but we do see a lot of explosions.
Yeah, lots of practical effects.I did particularly enjoy
watching that hangar blow up. That's also the scene where we
see all the ladies, right? The rafts on the base, I
(22:50):
believe. Don't remember, I'll take your
word for it. Maybe anyway.
It's a scene where we see you have his wife on the base and
she's working with, I'm guessinga superior officer or man, and
he reminds her that. I think it's like something to
do with the gas mask and he reminds her that they are meant
(23:12):
for the gas mask, not as a handbag.
Which I thought was a really shitty remark to milk.
Yeah. I mean, I won't say that the
presentation of women in this movie is perfect.
There's another scene where she lights a cigarette where she's
not supposed to, etcetera. But I mean.
Is what it is. 1969. And that's true.
So on Eagle Day, up to this point, the Germans and the
(23:34):
British are flying maybe a few 100 sorties a day.
Like a sortie is a mission. If you were a fighter pilot, you
would fly, you know, we talked about this in our Pure Classroom
and episode. You might fly two or three
missions a day. You wouldn't always just be 1
and done. The Germans flew 1485 sorties on
Eagle Day, which is quite a lot more than they had up to that
time. Two days later, they flew 1786
(23:57):
sorties on August 15th and the following day 1715.
So this is a market uptick. Pilot's life expectancy at this
point was just 87 flying hours. Only a couple of days, then
that's not great. Further German attacks on the
southern English airfields occurfor the end seven days.
So we see a lot of air battles and dark fights, and the dark
(24:19):
fights are really, really awesome.
Then Canfield, played by MichaelCaine, he shot down.
And you're like, no, not Canfield.
Because Canfield has a dog on the base.
And after he shot down, we get out like a little glimpse of his
dog looking sad. I was mostly sad he was shot
down because he was one of the few people I recognized from
(24:40):
scene to scene because I was like, it's Michael Caine.
Yeah, that's true. That's maybe 3 recognizable
people in this movie. That's Christopher Plummer, a
cocaine. And there's another blonde guy
that we couldn't find out his name, but his name is just
Squadron Leader Skipper, which is just a like a general name
and he's blonde and kind of interesting looking.
(25:03):
But other than that, everybody looks the same.
Yeah. So in real life, around this
point, the Germans begin to makea succession of strategic
errors. And this point, Goering makes
the mistake of ordering that theLuftwaffe are going to take the
focus off of attacking radar stations because it's pretty
tough to damage them. It's really easy to focus on
(25:25):
hitting, for example, the very visible aerial tower.
But the bulk of what makes a radar station work is what is in
the buildings that are on and under the ground.
And so the Germans were finding that even though they bombed
them a whole bunch, they were not taking them out of service.
But I mean, realistically, right?
Like this is how the British know when you're coming, so they
probably should have kept up a focus on that, but they decided
(25:48):
not to. The commanding officer of RAF 11
Group, and this is a fighter group catching the bulk of the
ship from the Germans because 11Group covers London and
surrounding area. And so they're very busy as you
can imagine. His name's Keith Park and he's
played by Trevor Howard. And this commanding officer of
RAF 12 Group, which is the groupthat gets called on to reinforce
(26:11):
11 Group quite a lot, this is Trafford Lee Mallory, played by
Patrick Wymark. These two are at odds over the
proper technique for countering German attacks.
So Lee Mallory of 12 Group, he has this big wing tactic, calls
it, and he thinks that the best way of cantering German attacks
is if you assemble 40 to 50 aircraft at 15,000 feet.
However, Park says this is superunwieldy.
(26:34):
It takes a long time. It's difficult to get 40 to 50
aircraft to be able to fly in sequence.
Like you're spending a lot of time getting that many planes
into formation. And at that point the bombers
are getting through. And this was a real life major
conflict. I don't know if this specific
conversation happened, but thesetwo guys were definitely
loggerheads about it, and doubting would end up getting in
(26:56):
trouble a little bit later because he didn't resolve this
issue satisfactorily while he was in command.
But in the movie, he points out the real problem here is lack of
pilots. He's like, well, it doesn't
really matter what formations wefly if we don't have enough
guys. And this conflict eventually
cost Keith Park, the CEO of RAF 11 Group, his command, though he
later was shifted to a command at Malta in 1942 and he proved
(27:20):
the results of his smaller squadron approach.
Thankfully, otherwise he would have had a shitty rest of his
career probably. I do like.
Lawrence Olivia is down in this.I thought he was interesting and
also kind of pessimistic the entire movie.
For sure. Everyone else is like, oh, I'll
fix that. And he's like, with whose
(27:41):
pilots? But they do have a secret weapon
which they are reluctant to use,which is the foreign pilots that
we'll get to in a bit. So this is a bit of a turning
point in a war. We get to see a squadron of
German bombers. They are lost in bed, weather at
night, and they accidentally jettison their bombs are from
(28:02):
London and the RAF enemy Italianspy attacking Berlin.
And this is kind of the accidental start of the bloom.
Yeah, it's definitely the catalyzing event.
I think the official, quote, UN quote start of the Blitz is
September 7th. That's when the Germans really
start the daylight attacks in earnest.
But yeah, the German bombers, they jettison their bombs over
(28:23):
London and the Germans have beenbombing the outskirts of London,
but this is, you know, they're trapping bombs right in the
middle. And this happens on the 24th of
August. And the RAF retaliates the next
night on the 25th. And the British intended to hit
industrial communications targets, but they also had bad
weather. And this led to a lot of non
military targets being hit. Big oops.
(28:43):
Yeah. So of course, as you can
imagine, Hitler is not very happy about this.
We get to see him making a big, frothy, angry speech because
what World War 2 movie would be complete without that?
And he retaliates. And this is a second strategic
error by the Germans because instead of focusing on getting
rid of the airfields and taking out the RAF, which has been the
goal up to this point, they givethe airfields a break and they
(29:06):
bomb London instead. And Herman Goering, played by
Hein Rees, is still convinced that the Germans have the
British against the ropes. They really have this sense in
their minds because they're getting these these crazy
reports, right? They're hearing that they're
Downing 70 British planes at a time.
And we just, we know that that'snot correct.
And that's pretty frequently thereports of fighter squadrons
(29:26):
would be wrong because many reasons.
You know, if I hit a plane and you hit a plane and we both
claim it, that's twice as many planes as actually went down.
So he's still convinced the British are are really taking
it. Will will ramp up the pressure.
And on September 7th, 1940, we see him turn up at Pas de Calais
on the French coast to command the daytime assault on London.
(29:46):
This. Portrayal of Hammer girl.
He's such a. They make him such a.
Clown. I can't take him seriously, but
we know he was pretty, like, notclowny.
Goering was a World War One fighter ace.
And obviously. Big supporter of Hitler's and
quite powerful in the Reich. At one point he just had so many
(30:09):
different job titles it makes you wonder how was he good at
carrying out any of them. But because he had flown a World
War One, right, which was reallythe first conflict where
airplanes actually featured, he wasn't a big technology guy.
All of his thoughts about strategy were pretty out of date
and he wasn't really interested in learning more.
And had that not been the case, the Germans strategy and tactics
(30:32):
might have been different. So there is another pilot that
we've kind of seen around. His name is Andy, and he's
played by Ian McShane. This is one of the finance I
could actually recognize becausehe's got quite a distinctive
mock of black hair. So yeah, someone I know.
But he returns to London and leave, and he discovers that his
(30:55):
wife and children, who he had sent away to the country, have
returned to London. And he's not very pleased about
it, but he gives his kids cute little Spitfire miniatures that
I want, please, thank you. And then there is a call for
volunteers to help get a family that's trapped by the bombing.
And he volunteers to go on it and he's fine.
(31:18):
Like he he does what he's supposed to do.
But then he gets back to the resting center that his wife and
his kids were staying it and finds out that it's been bombed
and they've died, which so sad. Why?
I guess I I struggled to care about these pilots that I barely
recognize, but I understand thatI'm supposed to.
(31:38):
I did recently see Ian McShane and I shitty horror movie with
that also had Renee Zellweger init and I was like, if you hear
the name Ian McShane, you might not picture a face in your mind,
but if you saw his face you would recognize him.
He's been in like a million things.
The RAF begins to train foreign pilots from German occupied
countries. This includes of course Poland
and Czechoslovakia. These pilots struggle a little
(32:01):
with the English language, but there's a funny scene where
they're being led by an English Squadron Leader and every time
he gives them instructions, theygo, what?
Say again? And he repeats the instruction
and they go, please, repeat say again.
And he says it again. And he's getting more and more
agitated. And then he realizes after like
the 6th or 7th say again that the polls are doing what he told
(32:22):
them to do. They're just fucking with him.
Anyway, I quite like that littlescene.
They prove their mettle when they brazenly attack and
unescorted group of bombers. And this is good because the new
British pilots coming up are very green.
You know, we see a scene where they're talking about this one
guy's like, Oh yeah, I have 8 hours of flight time on a
Spitfire or something thing which is, you know, not a lot of
(32:43):
time and often results in pilotsgetting killed before they can
even get battle experience. So.
Yeah, I feel like the other pilot, Jamie, has to lead those
pilots, and he's like, what the fuck?
Why am I getting these babies tolead?
Just stick by me and do what I tell you to do.
Burke and Darling discuss how the German strategic change from
(33:06):
mum in the airfields and airplane factories to bomb in
London will be beneficial. Because the RAF and recover and
the Germans don't have much further enough by the time they
get to London. This is to do with fuel and
stuff, right? So they can't really go anywhere
once they get there, and that's obviously a good thing.
Sure enough, the next time the Germans attack during the day,
(33:26):
they are routed by the RAF fighters.
So they're like there's one mother fuckers were right here
going orders the fighters to stay with the bombers, which is
not their purpose. They are supposed to be fighting
with the RAF but he doesn't stay.
But that leaves them vulnerable to be attack themselves.
(33:47):
So the Germans begin to lose a couple more planes.
Yeah. We see one of the German
officers snidely asking for an outfit of Spitfires for my
squadron. And this is based on Adolf
Gallant who was a World War 2 flying ace and flight group
commander who consulted on this movie.
And he did say that to growing at one point, supposedly out of
frustration at being given unmanageable orders.
(34:10):
And interestingly, I read that Gallon supposedly had some beef
with some of the movies depictions of the Germans.
Of course, he argued in particular that Operation Sea
Lion, which was the German plan to invade Britain, was actually
just the bluff to get the British to accept Hitler's peace
terms as it prepared to invade the Soviet Union.
And it was never a serious proposition, however.
(34:32):
I mean, the goal of the attacks on Britain was to ready it for
invasion and achieve air supremacy.
It was also to succeed at Goering's personal ambition of
destroying the RAF and bringing Britain down by air power alone.
He kept telling Hitler, oh, yeah, don't worry about it.
Like, you're barely going to need to invade.
I'm going to destroy everything that needs to be destroyed from
the air. You know, just wild hubris.
(34:54):
And the Germans were so confident that Operation C Line
would eventually go ahead once they had air superiority that
they deliberately left some southern English.
It's alone for use during the invasion. 13 German army
divisions had been moved to embarkation points on the French
coast, and there was a detailed plan in place for a landing.
There were over 1000 invasion craft massed in ports along the
channel, plus 600 more upriver and Antwerp.
(35:16):
So if it's a bluff like Gallon, just saying it's a pretty
fucking expensive bluff. Yeah, those are a lot of crafts,
and even all the way up to Antwerp.
So like that's another thing youdo in a day.
Like that's a rich. That's a rich.
Long operation outside. So and we move forward again on
(35:37):
September 15, 1940, the Luftwaffe makes its biggest and
most focused attack yet on London and at this point ever to
squadron is in the air with no reserves.
If they go down, that's it. They don't have any reserves and
the fighting is very heavy. Harvey is shot down and he's a
fight, but he's certainly wounded and burnt, which is
(36:00):
interesting because his wife Maggie, who had just not badly
burned Squadron Leader Evans, played by Dale Foxley, works off
when she years then her husband has been badly burned.
We're just kind of, I don't knowwhat to.
Think about this. She's like, I don't want to deal
with that. Maybe we don't know.
It's kind of left in the in the air, literally.
(36:20):
Squadron Leader Evans, played byBill Foxley.
Bill Foxley was a real World War2 veteran.
He, well, I don't know if it washim, but they crashed their
bomber during a training exercise in 1944.
And he actually escaped unharmed, but his crewmates were
still in the plane, so he went back to get them.
Three of them survived, including him out of six.
(36:41):
But he was quite badly burned. He needed something like 29
operations. If you look up a picture of this
guy, it's very, I mean, they given the medical technology at
the time, they really did their best.
Yeah. He went on to live a long life.
He talked about how when he would sit on the train to go
into town, people would always leave an empty seat next to him
because, you know, he's quite disfigured and people have
(37:04):
certain feelings about that. So yeah, that did make me a
little sad to read about. But I did think it was cool that
he got to be in this movie. As someone would Burns.
Like it's just kind of like justice to be in this movie, I
guess, after people just been ignoring you for looking at me.
Yeah, so in real life, after themassive daylight raid on London
on September 7th, which is sort of the unofficial start of the
(37:26):
Blitz, followed by another a week later on the 15th of
September, which is known as Battle of Britain Day in the UK.
Because I think that's when people started to get a sense
that the tides were turning. The Germans had to rethink their
strategy because it had started to become really clear that
Fighter Command was not as closeto the brink as they thought.
Hitler had to push back Operation Sea Lion until further
(37:48):
notice, and they shifted their focus back to trying to
obliterate the RAF again. Goering still believed it could
be done in four to five days, because that's what had happened
in Poland and France. But in those countries, there
hadn't really been a significantair defense to shatter, right?
So really, it doesn't make any sense why he would think that.
But he kept telling Hitler like,yeah, four or five days, we got
(38:08):
it. It's on lock.
No. In the movie, the next day,
everyone is geared up for another massive raid, but it
just doesn't happen. We get a scene where all the
pilots are sitting around outside in the sunshine.
This isn't parallel to a similarscene at the beginning, but in
the beginning everyone's kind ofjoking around, having a good
time. Now they're all, they've been
through too much shit, man. They're sitting there and
(38:30):
they're all pensive, gazing off into the middle distance.
And then across the channel we see the German air forces leave
the coast, furious, Gurring among them, hollering angrily
out the window. And subordinates.
I did like this, ending the clear skies after seeing all the
German fighters and the bombers in there before, and now it's
suddenly beautiful. I did like it does end quite
(38:51):
suddenly. I kind of wish we'd gotten to
see our Canadian, but I guess he's just somewhere being
disfigured. Yeah, and I mean, this whole
thing where they they route the Germans and then the Germans
never come back is obviously not100% accurate.
The Germans weren't defeated in one day like that.
On September 19th, Hitler ordered the assembly of the
(39:12):
invasion fleet to be stopped anddispersed because of course, if
you have a bunch of craft on theChannel, lots of opportunities
for the British to bomb the shitout of it, which was happening.
And a couple weeks later, on October 12th, he decided that he
would postpone Operation Sea Lion until at least the spring.
And of course, we know that it never ended up happening.
And daytime attacks by the Germans dwindled by the end of
October, so did take another month or so.
(39:35):
The movie closes on down and locking up with the sky as we
were just saying where the church aquatic.
There's never in the field of human conflict with so much.
Owed by so many to suffer. I do love this crowd.
It's a beautiful crowd. Epic quote.
Yeah, Doubting lost his post in November of 1940.
(39:55):
About a month or so later, afterhe retired in 1942, supposedly
they asked him to write an official report of the battle.
Written, which was never published Instead, the Air
Ministry wrote its own history without even mentioning his
name. There are several reasons for
this. At that point the British were
turning to offense instead of defense.
Of course, now they're no longerhaving to defend their own
(40:16):
island. So it's going to be less
predominantly focused on FighterCommand.
Now it's going to be a bit more focused on Bomber Command
because now they're trying to goout and bomb the Germans.
Not necessarily his specialty. So he was removed from that
post. Also, they were upset that he
had taken CEO Park's side more or less in the big wing debate,
(40:37):
and he hadn't ended up resolvingthat.
And it had caused a lot of problems and tension in the
fighter commands during the Battle of Britain.
And he also had a few political enemies.
And so he lost his job. And initially there was a bit of
a shadow over his name, but Churchill stood up for him and
so his reputation has been somewhat restored, I think.
I mean, I would say I don't knowa lot.
(40:58):
About him other than what I've just seen in this movie, but I.
Think it's on a. Route just to not mention him at
all and this entire report of his pets all like Dunning.
Who's that? Yeah, and then we get an end
card. I'm not going to read all of
this because it's just a bunch of numbers and y'all aren't
going to remember anyways. But we got an end card that says
(41:19):
in tribute to the Allied pilots who took part in the Battle of
Britain. And then it lists where the
pilots were from and how many participated and how many were
killed. So of course the RAF and other
Commonwealth, there was also theFleet Air Arm of the Navy, so
they also contributed pilots. And of course we have
Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians, S Africans, Southern
Rhodesians, Irish, American, Polish, Czech, Belgian, Free
(41:41):
French, and they've listed one Israeli pilot.
Israel did not exist yet when this happened, I believe it was.
A. British man who was just born in
the British Mandate of Palestine.
But regardless that gets mentioned.
There's also a card that shows German losses during the Battle
of Britain, and these were estimates available at the time,
but subsequent research has demonstrated most of them are
(42:03):
grossly overestimated for the reasons we talked about before.
Pilots just tend to be not very accurate when they report how
many planes they've shot down. But bomber crews, 1176 killed in
action, Stoka crews, Stokos, those are the dive bombers, 85
killed in action. Fighter bomber crews 212 killed
in action, Fighter pilots 171 killed in action and missing
crews 1445. I suspect those missing crews
(42:27):
were killed in action. Most likely they are drowned,
like a lot of them would just end up in the drunk.
Right. And and up until pretty deep
into the Battle of Britain, the British in particular didn't
have a great system coordinated for fishing airmen out of the
Channel. This was something that they
(42:48):
hastily had to develop on the fly.
Yeah, and that's right. I didn't even finish watching
the end card, so I'll be honest with you, it's kind of done.
I was like, oh, this movies do alot.
Yeah, it definitely started to feel that way a little bit,
yeah. This movie used 100 real
(43:13):
aircraft, making it the 35th largest Air Force in the world
at the time. As you can imagine, in 1969, I
don't know how effective of an Air Force it would have been
with a lot of World War 2 planes, but nevertheless, it
gives you some idea of the size.And I was reading a little bit
about this and it's so interesting.
So if they didn't have a make and model of Spitfire or Mr.
(43:35):
Schmidt that was available in the summer or in fall of 1940,
they might use a later model andrepaint it or tweak it a little
bit. Same thing if they didn't have a
particular bomber, they would take a bomber that they did have
and they would kind of rejig it or film it from certain angles
or add little bits and pieces toit to make it look like a make
and model that it wasn't. So I thought that was really
(43:57):
cool to read about all the work they put into that.
They also used radio. What do you call it?
Like miniatures? Yeah, like like remote
controlled planes. Yeah, they like I would want to
go nuts. Yeah, it's pretty cool.
And they really made the most of, you know, if they.
So the two British fighter planes that were predominantly
(44:19):
used were the Hurricane and the Spitfire.
And though the Spitfire has captured the popular
imagination, there were more Hurricanes and Spitfires used,
and the Spitfires were faster. So they would take on the
fighter planes and then the Hurricanes would take on the
bomber. So that's kind of how the
separation of duties worked out.But anyway, so they had a few
hurricanes that they had gotten for the movie, and some of them
(44:41):
could only taxi. They couldn't actually fly.
So you'll see a shot of some hurricanes taxiing by and of
course, just out of frame, they're not really taking off up
into the air, but it looks real while you're watching it.
Smart movie making. There is a movie called
Hurricane. I think it's about Polish
pilots. I think we should watch it.
Yeah. For sure, down the operations
room used in the film is the real operations room for #11
(45:03):
Fighter Command, which as we mentioned, was the group of
Fighter Command getting the mostbattering during the Battle of
Britain. You can actually visit it today
at RAF Oxbridge. It's a little museum, so that's
kind of cool. Neat.
I would love to go there sometime.
I have to get back to the UK at some point, yeah.
For sure. There is a sequence in one of
the aerial battles where a pilotplayed by Edward Fox takes down
(45:25):
a badly damaged bomber which crashes spectacularly into a
railway station. And rather than really
remembering what the pilots doing, I mean in my memory
anyway, you mostly remember the practical effects.
You're like cool big explosion. But the pilot is based on a real
guy named Ray Holmes, who on the15th of September 1940 rammed
his Hurricane into a bomber overLondon when his guns locked up
(45:46):
and he had no other way of taking it down.
Holmes survived and was praised as a hero.
Of course, his plane rammed intothe ground at 350 mph to the
point where they couldn't get itout, so they just left it there
until May 2004. And he was there as an honorary
guest when it had to be moved tomake way for a new water main.
(46:06):
He. Survived.
Wow. Yeah, I believe he, yeah.
Thank God a number of subsequentfilms, including Midway which
came out in 1976, borrowed stockfootage from this movie and we
have discussed potentially covering Midway pretty soon, so
keep an eye out for that. And Michael Caine's spoken cameo
in Dunkirk, the 2017 movie whichwe have covered, so go check
(46:28):
that out as a Spitfire pilot, isa little nod to his role in this
movie. Yes, I love microphone.
I'm certainly died in this one. Yeah, I mean, Michael Caine,
Laurence Olivier, there's some, there's a pretty stacked cast.
Christopher Plummer. Yep, if only their characters
had a little more character to them, that would have been
great. Could have used a little more
(46:49):
meat for sure. Yeah, well, I think we should
get to. Write in this movie and I had a
fabulous idea for writing this because.
There's a lot of mentions and visual stuff about tea in this
movie, so I think we should write it.
At least there's tea I've done. It's true.
That really seems to be the epitome, the symbol of the
(47:11):
British stiff upper lip. The keep calm and carry on.
They're like, well, you know what?
We're getting the ship on that of us make a cuppa.
Like there open some roof in London I think and there's some
guy over the teapot. Yeah.
You go first, you ready first. All right, I would give this
movie 6. At least there's teas out of 10.
It's, I'm just, it really captures my imagination that
(47:33):
they use so many real planes from World War 2 and that they
use practical effects. And the aerial combat scenes
look really cool. I mean, if you're into that, I
definitely recommend watching them.
There were some little funny moments.
The acting was pretty good. I liked that they showed the wax
and they gave us one with a namewho had things to do.
And despite the fact that I found the book dry, I did learn
(47:53):
a ton of stuff. It was like taking a crash
course, man. Like there was no narrative in
this book. It was like you're going to
learn some fucking facts about the Battle of Britain.
So buckle in. And I did.
I know more about liquid cooled versus air cooled engines than I
ever desired or even thought that I could know.
But yeah, that said, it is a little lengthy.
It's kind of dry in places, and they didn't do a great job of
(48:14):
pulling the narrative together. It's really just like, here's
what happened and then this and then this and then this.
And so it's not a terrifically interesting watch, unless you're
someone who likes when history movies are almost documentary
like, in which case then this isthe movie for you.
What did you think? I also want to write this six at
least, or she's out of town because like you, I find the
(48:37):
subject matter quite interesting.
And I didn't know a lot about it.
And it's a good like, entry point into learning more about
the Battle of Britain. But as a movie, it's not very
interesting. It's like, it's OK, it's not a
waste of time, but it's also notwhen I'd watch again.
So short and sweet for me, I think.
(49:04):
Are you reading anything? I am in fact reading something
again. I got back into Mission Europe
by GATE figures, which is about the SRE in Europe in different
countries. And it's.
Super interesting. I really like reading about the
SRE. How about you?
What have you been up to since you're super dry?
(49:24):
Burke, the narrow margin. I took a little break from World
War 2 and I've just just finished.
I finished it last night. Utica the life and legends of
britains warrior queen by Vanessa calling Ridge.
I think similar to the Battle ofBritain, Butica looms pretty
large in the British imaginationas you know, warrior queen.
I suppose the book was interesting because they we
(49:46):
don't know a lot about her life,but the author gave a lot of
context about the history of theRoman Empire around that time,
what was happening, what life was like for the Celtic tribes
who are living in England. And also talked quite a lot
about her legacy and how that's impacted female monarchs and
female leaders since then. And, you know, the impact that
(50:08):
she's had on the popular imagination.
Yeah, it was pretty interesting.Yeah, I love that.
Well, that's it for this week. Thank you everybody for
listening. You can find us wherever you get
your podcasts and read those five stars.
Please do read Love that you cansend this episode to your friend
who needs to learn more about about the midway and not midway
(50:28):
about the. Midway on the brain, there's
going to be planes on that too. Stop it, you're making me laugh.
You can send this episode to your friend who needs to learn
more about the Battle of Britainlike we did.
You can follow us on Instagram at Rosydera Viewer Podcast, or
you can visit ourwebsite@rosyderaviewer.com
(50:50):
and we'll see you next week. Bye.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.