Home movies from the front...

[bobbysocks]

During his tour in the UK Charles Sumner 357FG 364Sq C5-Z "Bat Cave" took almost an hour of 8mm B&W and color film of life at Leiston and other instances of the war. Later he put them on CD and narrated...told who was being filmed, what was going on, etc. His son Stuart released these recently and I am going to share them with you. The quality is sketchy at times ( hey its 70 year old stuff ) and the narration gets garbled. But you can see some interesting things, people, gun camera footage, and etc. its in 4 parts....




View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYXnWxhPe68


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TE2AGOUh0S8


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en4lxMsbzMg


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3TbVGolb9Q

 

[finno2]

This was very entertaining thax

 

[michaelmaltby]

Just watched No. 1 - will catch the others later - but historically speaking WHAT AN ADDITION. Those P-51 pilots all look so confident and happy - no doubts. Some great comments: "Trained on P-39's in the States. A lot of the boys remember them fondly" (Chuck Yeager, anyone ) And on Spitfires: "They did a great job over Britain but they didn't have the range needed to fight the Germans over Germany".

Thank you.

MM

 

[finno2]

I saw a DO 335 in the guncam of an P-51, NEVER new they ever was deployed in action

 

[Grampa]

That Do 335. whas that a two-seater? If so that must that be a A-12 version, a traineer perhaps? I couldent see any radar-antenna.

 

[finno2]

I think I got an answere to this, I think that cut is from an captured DO 335 A12 with P 51 escort. it was captured 2 of them . So I guess this was put in just to fill up the scene. The P 51 did not shoot it down in that cut, not firering at all

EDIT: Probably got the answere from SAS Forum by Crazyflak Here is a picture he found

 

[finno2]

Sorry replica post

 

[bobbysocks]

as far as i know...all the flim was from the members of the fighter group. i will have to see if any of them make mention of this instance. and the gun camera could be used independently from firing. the guys would often shot a quick burst of film only to confirm a kill. i will see what i can find out about this.

 

[bobbysocks]

ok..i asked around and got the story on this Do. one of the guys believes it was a Do235 but its listed as a Do335 in other places ( what the difference is I cant tell). after the war the 357th FG went to occupy the airdrome at Neubiberg, Germany. while there they had the opportunity to go over several LW ac including this Do. The LW ground crews and pilots were pretty much given free reign to roam the base and do some of the jobs...the LW pilots were even welcome in the officers club. they taught the americans about the ac there and how to do the maintenace and even fly some of them. some mock dogfights were flown to see how these ac handled. this Do was supposedly flown by Capt. Robert D. Brown in a dogfight with 357th ace Major Don Bochkay. They found big Dornier was very fast, but not as agile as the P-51. i would pretty much bet that is where the gun camera footage came from.

 

[woljags]

i thought the do335 was suppost to be very fast,could a mustang of kept up with one as there were reports that it could out run a hawker tempest