1987 U.K. WWII Aviation Movie

[Christopher Wolfe]

G'day all.

 

Early in 1987 (about late April) I visited the UK to do a hobby shop tour.
Many bargains were picked up btw from Henry J's and Michael's Models.

 

My host took me to stay at her father's home at Brentwood (Essex) and to my amazement one morning I heard the roar of low flying piston engined aircraft and ducked outside to see a Me109 closely followed by a pair of Hawker Hurricanes. Probably at about 1000' according to my untrained eye.

 

First of all I thought that I was dreaming and in a time warp but when I mentioned this to my friends father I was told that there was a film studio nearby.

So my question is; Was a WWII aviation movie being filmed in the Brentwood area in early 1987 and if so, what was it's title and was it ever released?

 

Chris

[David perry 1]

Hope and Glory?

 

[kc]

It is very common to see historic planes planes flying over the Brentwood area as it's near to North Weald and not too far from Duxford or Old Warden where lots of planes are kept in flying order.    Often see them flying over for airshows.  

Not aware of any film studios near Brentwood but North Weald is only a few miles away and they shot much of The Battle of Britain film there in 1968 and probably later films or TV too.

We expect the usual flypast of aircraft for the Trooping of The Colour on 17 June to fly right over Brentwood as in previous years.   So the Battle of Britain Memorial flight will likely be seen here - weather stopped the Coronation flypast though.   ( Lucky us?  Well there will be a NoFly zone which prevents model flying and of course WE pay for it in our taxes! )

[kc]

Hope & Glory is available on DVD in UK format.

[Martin Harris - Moderator]

Reminds me of a rather surreal experience in 1997 when I popped out one lunchtime to do a little shopping.  I heard the unmistakeable sound of Merlins passing at low level and a few minutes later heard them again and was rewarded by the sight of two P51 Mustangs in close formation heading towards Hatfield Airfield.  After the third pass I hopped into my van and headed for a field test station owned by my employer which adjoined the airfield just in time to be transported back in time over 50 years to a rather damaged and smoking French village being strafed by the Mustangs accompanied by sundry explosions just a couple of hundred yards away.  To say it felt real was an understatement!

 

Some months later, I went to the pictures to watch Saving Private Ryan hoping to see if I could catch some of the action from that day and found that I had witnessed the shooting of the final action sequence.

 

 

[kc]

It could have been the 1989 TV series 'Piece of Cake' being filmed, although that seems to have been a Spitfire squadron but they might well have shown Hurricanes too.   Worth considering buying the DVD at about £9 if the era interests you.    The review said that Ray & Mark Hanna & Nick Grace did the flying sequences so it's real planes and would have been the Duxford ME109 .  It's a lesser known TV series that I missed at the time but this comes up when one searches for 'Airline' on DVD ( Airline was partly Boddingtons efforts with models and worth seeing again but that DVD is very expensive at the moment. )

To my mind modern TV comes nowhere near the quality of these old TV films - in the old stuff one can actually hear every word the actors speak! 

[leccyflyer]

There were no Hurricanes in Piece of Cake unfortunately, as the story in the book demanded them but none were available.

[Christopher Wolfe]

Thanks for all the replies people.

 

What jogged my memory of that day back in 1987 was that I have often seen a Focke Wulf 190 flying locally here in Australia. Australian fw 190

 

Over Lake Hume (near Albury) seems to be the owners preferred testing area.

 

Just up the road a few hundred k's is the delightful town of Temora which houses a nice collection of warbirds Temora Aviation Museum.

 

Chris

[J D 8]

  Hi Christopher, It may interest you I have a TV film model. It was one of several models and ground running replicas built and flown by David Boddington and his team for Yorkshire television's Edwardian drama series "Flambards" It is said to have been the first time air to air film shots using a helicopter and model were done.

 

Edited May 31, 2023 by J D 8
more info

[J D 8]

Flambards Bleriot XI, still flown now and then when conditions are good [calm]  Cheers, John.

[kc]

The Flambards TV series is still available on DVD and worth seeing ( better than much TV made recently I reckon) and somewhere online is Boddington's article on how the models etc were filmed.

[J D 8]

             I was lucky enough to find a copy of rcme with the article. It was interesting how they got good ground level shots of the models by having camera men in fox holes, the cameras were quite large back then.