News about three films on the Air War, the first with direct Pathfinder connections, the other two concerning other interesting aspects of the Allied bombing campaign.
Firstly, the docudrama Hero which has recently been released. Filmed on a shoestring budget, it has no major distributor, so is being screened in only a handful of cinemas. It is about Ulric Cross, the most decorated black serviceman of the Second World War. Hailing from Trinidad, Cross volunteered for the RAF in 1941. He eventually joined 139 Jamaica Squadron of Pathfinder fame. Nicknamed “The Black Hornet” by his comrades, Cross was a navigator, flying in Mosquitoes. For more on Cross and the film, see this recent Telegraph article.
Also on a newspaper link is this amazing story of the conservation and repair of wartime footage of the American Air Force flying from bomber stations in England. Watch how the film editors did this, including ‘Before’ and ‘After’ shots, and you will be astonished at what they achieved. See this article in The Sun.
Lastly, Lancaster Skies, the link being for the trailer.
Apparently this film was also made on a shoestring, for only £80,000, and as they have done extremely well with such a limited budget and the film certainly has some excellent moments, it seems a bit churlish to criticise it too heavily. Nonetheless, some of the implausibilities are rather hard to take. For example, the incorrect claim that the height of the bomber war was in spring 1944, the landscape in the airfield scenes being clearly mid-summer, and lastly the massed Lancasters of the finale taxiing and taking off from a grass field.* However, if you can suspend disbelief in certain places, this film is well worth watching, and indeed at times it is very gripping and moving. Its heart is certainly in the right place. (Illustration is a still from the film.)
* Lancasters could take off from grassland if there were very dry conditions, but all the major bomber airfields would have had concrete runways by this stage of the war.