we retired.” But Hamilton, who had lived through
the Blitz, served in the Royal Navy and survived
the infamous decimation of Convoy PQ-17 by
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English battle veterans had been named tech-
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Bader and Peter Townsend, Wing Cmdr. Robert
Stanford Tuck and Squadron Leaders James
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terrible burns in a 1944 Vickers Wellington crash.
Although from quite different generations, the
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after night, to Edward R. Murrow on the radio
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Plummer said. “Now to meet these guys like Bader
and Lacey and Townsend is really something.”
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brakes and stood it on its nose. And Lacey com-
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Nor did they have much good to say about their
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Battle of Britain they might really have been there.”
For the London bombing scene the studio
bought an abandoned tea warehouse and demol-
ished it, along with a derelict section of the city
waterfront that had actually been heavily bombed
in 1940 and, a generation later, condemned by the
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nfortunately the bad weather followed
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tracted for six weeks,” said CAF founder
Wilson “Connie” Edwards, “and 11 months later
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he received 16 of the Buchóns, including a rare
two-seat trainer. He traded two of them back for
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never thought about anyone being inside them.”
Asked for the moral of the movie story, he said,
“Surely the lesson is that one forgives but that one
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Bader had lost both legs in an aircraft crash, but
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QN1_I[JTQVL1¼LSVW_1¼LJMMVQVIJTWWLa3ZI]\STAND-INS FOR
OLD ENEMIES
Neither the HA-1112
(foreground) nor the
Spitfire Mk. IX fought
in the real Battle of
Britain, but both were
powered by Rolls-
Royce Merlin engines.
THE HANGAR
THAT GETS
BLOWN UP IN
THE ATTACK
ON DUXFORD
REALLY WAS A
HANGAR AT
DUXFORD, AND
REALLY WAS
BLOWN UP.