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Just finished watching "Spitfire, the plane that saved the World" on Netflix. It's also been on Amazon. Wonderful film.

 

Lumpy, there's a great tribute to the women who served as your mom did ferrying these planes. At the end of the film, a Women's Auxiliary pilot is reunited with a plane she delivered in 1944. She was 100 years old at the time of the film. :wub:

 

 

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I once found an ME-109 in a junk yard in Munich.  It showed up there in a delivery of scrap one day. I don’t know where she came from, probably a farm in the nearby countryside.  The cockpit was in pretty good shape, because it had been closed.  And, the guns were still mounted in the wings.  I managed to get one out.   Wasn’t much to the planes, but they were maneuverable and did a lot of damage.  I took some b&w pictures and might have the negatives somewhere.  I developed the film and printed lots of positives.  I may have given them all away, but the negatives have to be around somewhere.  Long time...Made me get excited about it again.  :-)

Cat Brules

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Now there's one I simply MUST see!
I had to laugh aloud at the sweet little old gal who described the Spitfire as being a lady in the air but less polite on the ground.

She spoke with the certainty of firsthand knowledge, the delicacy of a grandmother, and the subtle but wicked humor of a British survivor!

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18 hours ago, Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103 said:

Now there's one I simply MUST see!
I had to laugh aloud at the sweet little old gal who described the Spitfire as being a lady in the air but less polite on the ground.

She spoke with the certainty of firsthand knowledge, the delicacy of a grandmother, and the subtle but wicked humor of a British survivor!

I've seen the documentary.  With the Spitfire being a tail dragger with a fairly narrow undercarriage track it was most suited to smooth, flat runways.  The Hurricane had a wider undercarriage track and handled austere airfields far better then the Spitfire.

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Through a piece of good luck, I once spent 6 hours with a Spitfire ace, Air Commodore Sir Archie Winskill, who twice received the DFC and twice evaded capture after his Spitfires were shot down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_Winskill

 

He was 85 when I met him in 2002. He was very animated and candid when talking about the Spitfire and his war service. He extoled the Spitfire very highly.

 

Two of his kills were of Italian C42s, biplanes the Italians flew in the last days of the Battle of Britain. One of them shot out his Plexiglas canopy.

 

He said they would come back from combat to Biggin Hill, take the train into London, visit the bars in Jermyn Street, then back late to fly again the next day.

 

 

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And, whilst scrolling through the documentaries, I spotted on on Scotch!

 

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Not to start a war but, "The plane that saved the world?" To paraphrase another movie, "Pretty bold words from a short legged fighter." While a fantastic point defense fighter in it's own rights, I think it safe to say, she had a little help in saving the world.

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1 hour ago, Doc X said:

Not to start a war but, "The plane that saved the world?" To paraphrase another movie, "Pretty bold words from a short legged fighter." While a fantastic point defense fighter in it's own rights, I think it safe to say, she had a little help in saving the world.

Like the Hurricane? ;)
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/battle-of-britain-week-was-the-hurricane-the-plane-247944

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9 minutes ago, Utah Bob #35998 said:

Like the Hurricane? ;)

You bet! I saw where the Hurricane had more victories during the Battle of Britain that the Spit. And don't forget the Tempest, Typhoon, Lightning and Thunderbolt doing ground attack that denied the roads to the Axis by daylight. Not to mention when long range bomber escort duties came into play, Spits couldn't go to Berlin and back but the Mustang could. It took a whole group of increasingly better aircraft from both England and the US to "save the world."

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More accurately the statement should have been “The plane that helped save Britain”

But I’ve seen the Garand touted as “The Gun that Won WW2”.

That’s not entirely accurate either. ;)
 

Indeed, the successful outcome of the late unpleasantness was a team effort.
Admittedly not always a smoothly functioning team. Kinda like an NBA team with a bunch of different personalities and egos. Who said there’s no I in team? :lol:

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43 minutes ago, Red Gauntlet , SASS 60619 said:

Sure, but the Spitfire, together with the Mustang, was the sexiest of the fighters. So beauty gets more than its share of the glory, as always!

The Hurricane, the Jug, and the rest get the second dance....

Nothing sounds like a Merlin (or Packard built Rolls Royce) doing a fly by! If that sound doesn't send a shiver up you spine you just don't like planes!

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Kind of off topic but I thought I'd share an old photo from the 2007 Dayton Airshow. They did a "legacy flight" with an F15, F4 and P51. Was tracking the planes around waiting for the F4 to close up and knew a building was coming up so I snapped it and had no idea I'd caught Old Glory until I looked through my pictures. 

2.jpg

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9 minutes ago, The Original Lumpy Gritz said:

Mom loved the P-51. It was her favorite, followed by the P-38.

She did say the 51 would kill you(as the pilot)faster than any other aircraft she flew as a WASP.

OLG 

I knew a Mustang pilot that escorted bombers up from Italy. He said the exact same thing, loved the Mustang but his first take off in one scared him darn near to death!

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