Monday, March 18, AD 2024 10:01pm

633 Squadron

Squadron Leader Adams: Well, at least the rockets won’t happen.
Air Vice Marshal Davis: Of course they’ll happen. But they won’t start tomorrow, or this month or on D-Day, and that’s important.
Squadron Leader Adams: Then what’s it all add up to? All their sacrifice?
Air Vice Marshal Davis: A successful operation.
Squadron Leader Adams: But they’re probably all dead. All 633 Squadron.
Air Vice Marshal Davis: You can’t kill a squadron.

Ending, 633 Squadron (1964)


 

 

Something for the weekend.  The theme song from 633 Squadron.  In my misspent youth I spent endless hours watching old war movies on TV.  One of my favorites was the British flick 633 Squadron (1964) which recounted the fictional tale of a British Mosquito bomber squadron and their self sacrificial attempt to take out a well-defended Nazi V2 rocket fuel plant in occupied Norway.  The film won praise for its aerial sequences, cutting edge in 1964, and George Lucas has cited the squadron’s attack on the plant as influencing the trench run sequence attack on the Death Star in Star Wars.

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Don the Kiwi
Saturday, July 30, AD 2016 5:50pm

The De Haviland Mosquito – a plane I have loved since my youth, growing up in the late 1940’s and ’50’s, when these aircraft were a common sight in our skies.
One of the most famous – and beautiful – aircraft ever built – many were flown by the RNZAF during and after WW2. In, I think, 1945 one was flown from Sydney Australia to Auckland NZ in 4 hours – a speed record that was not broken until the introduction of Boeng 707’s in 1960.
If you’re interested, here is a video clip of the first one to roll off the production line at Ardmore in Auckland in 2012 – the only place in the world now, where these planes are made. Enjoy:-

Guy McClung
Admin
Sunday, July 31, AD 2016 6:44am

Same with prolife folks-you cannot kill the prolife mission

Kennybhoy
Kennybhoy
Sunday, July 31, AD 2016 6:27pm

The squadron and raid portrayed in the film were fictional but closely inspired by actual events including among others Operations Jericho and Carthage, the attack on the Knaben molybdenum mining facility, the Oslo raid of 25 September 1942 and the Berlin raids of 30th January 1943. During the last of these the German radio broadcasts actually caught the sound of the explosions! 🙂

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

http://www.peoplesmosquito.org.uk/2013/12/06/operation-carthage-the-shell-house-raid-21st-march-1945/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knaben#Second_World_War

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

http://www.peoplesmosquito.org.uk/2014/01/29/30th-january-1943-mossies-put-the-kibosh-on-herrs-goering-goebbels/

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

My favourite scene in the film isn’t the famously splendidly raid on the fjord factory but the attack on the Gestapo HQ to kill Lt Bergman. The inter cutting between the interrogation of Lt Bergman and the approach of the single Mosquito culminating in the sudden blaring of the air raid siren and very different the looks on the faces of Bergman and the Nazis…

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