Battle of Britain 70th Anniversary Articles

Battle of Britain 70th: Battle of Britain on TV - Reviewed With the 70th Anniversary of the Battle of Britain being the last major anniversary where a large number of Battle veterans will be with us, television companies clearly wanted to mark the anniversary in a comprehensive way. What's more, says Mark Broadbent, they did a fine job.

Modern TV, some aircraft enthusiasts will tell you, does not care about aviation. This is an understandable view. Apart from programmes squirreled away on the satellite TV channels, there is a paucity of aviation on the mainstream channels. But any concerns broadcasters don't care about, or can no longer make, worthy aviation history programmes were put the sword with the Battle of Britain 70th anniversary commemorations.

The amount of primetime TV hours dedicated to marking the Battle was impressive. Unsurprisingly in a time when ratings are everything, the air of celebrity hung around some of the output. But it was never the stench some feared it may have been, and producers thankfully recognised the story of the Battle and those involved does not need X Factor-style artificial story arcs and manipulated reality. This was an anniversary not only marked, but marked well.

First up was 'David Jason: The Battle of Britain' on ITV1. It says something about today's multi-channel world, where TV schedulers are obsessed with ensuring their programmes stand out from the thousands available on Electronic Programme Guides, that ITV actually referenced Jason's name into the title. That aside, this was a decent programme in an A-B-C building block sort of way, including veterans' reminiscences and giving equal prominence to the vital supporting functions performed by engineers, WAAF and Observer Corps and the crucial importance of radar.

Inevitably Jason was taken for a flight in a Spitfire, specifically Carolyn Grace's TIX ML407. Yes, this particular aeroplane has no connection with the Battle, but the superbly crisp air-to-air footage of ML407 sweeping past and barrel-rolling above the Battle of Britain Monument at Capel-le-Ferne in Kent, with the flat patchwork quilt of English countryside stretching beyond underneath a cloud-dappled sky, was an undeniably poignant one.

Next was BBC Two's 'First Light', a drama-documentary adaptation of Geoffrey Wellum's powerful autobiography of the same title and which, in my opinion, is the finest of all Battle reminiscences. I must admit that I was anticipating it to be rather weak, but production company Lion TV did a fine job. Pleasingly it ran for 90 minutes rather than an hour, which would have rather compromised the central underlying theme of the psychological impact of being on a frontline fighter squadron. Some newspaper TV reviewers were quick to criticise the slow nature of how that theme was built during the film, but then the slow, increasingly pervasive way the Battle ate at pilots was the reality. The ending, with Wellum's voice overlaid across a Spitfire flying off into the distant blue and the fade to the postscript and credits, was tremendously well-executed - one of those moments that only film can provide where the marriage of visuals, voice and music was genuinely emotive.

The prohibitive expense today of amassing many warbirds to recreate a fighter squadron led to the film only using one real Spitfire (LFIXe TE184) - even then for just forty-five minutes - a replica and a Yak-52 to film the 'in-cockpit' sequences of actor Sam Heughan 'flying' the Spitfire. The aerial combat scenes used 1969 'Battle of Britain' film out-takes. This, together with the well-lit and photographed ground scenes and Wellum's own reminiscences seventy years out from 1940, meant 'First Light' was, overall, well-judged and moving, giving a real sense of what it was like to be at the sharp end in that summer. Wellum himself said it was the most realistic impression of the Battle he'd ever seen, and you can't gain higher praise than that.

After the drama, back to documentary on BBC Two with the historian James Holland's 'Battle of Britain: The Real Story'. Holland has made a name for himself in recent years with military histories that impressively weave big-picture narratives told from a variety of viewpoints with lucid vignettes of the human side of conflict - which, as a history graduate myself, I know is difficult to balance - while also having the knack of presenting intriguing new insights.

The documentary followed in this vein. Effectively a 60-minute version of the themes Holland explored in his Battle of Britain book released earlier this year, the programme gratifyingly shied away from the 'plucky-Brits-versus-Germans' mythology and painted a vivid picture of the Battle's complexities. It told the story from the German perspective, with the influence of the German Navy's E-boats a fresh perspective on the overall strategic picture of the Battle, and an excellent technical comparison of the Spitfire and Hurricane against the BF109. Holland also met a Luftwaffe Battle veteran, Hans Ekkehard Bob. Overall this was an intelligent, insightful and balanced piece that was deservedly well received by enthusiasts and, hopefully, was appreciated by a wider audience.

Another positive aspect of Holland's programme, and his book, was recognition of the role played in the Battle by the often-forgotten Bomber Command. BBC Two and Four also profiled unsung elements of the Battle. On BBC Four there was a documentary about the building of the Wellington bomber and 'The South Coast Trail', which used metal-detecting to unearth (literally) stories of crash sites and former aircraft factories, while BBC Two's 'Spitfire Women' told the role of the Air Transport Auxiliary's woman pilots. It was good to see that aspects of the Battle sometimes forgotten were given prominence, and recognition that the Battle was not just an epic of Spits and Hurries weaving across the skies.

The last of the BBC's set-piece Battle programmes was BBC One's 90-minute documentary, simply titled 'The Battle of Britain', fronted by movie star Ewan McGregor and his brother Colin, who was a RAF Tornado GR1/4 pilot. Using McGregor (Ewan, that is) to front the programme attracted the derision of some reviewers, but Ewan did come across as enthusiastic and, in any case, this programme's leitmotif was how RAF Battle of Britain pilots got there in the first place. So, we followed Colin progressing through the RAF's flying training system, learning first on the Tiger Moth before moving through to the Harvard and finally the Spitfire.

While the programme did stray at times into the David-and-Goliath myth territory that's surrounded the Battle in popular historical culture, and while there were no scholarly insights save for author Stephen Bungay's brief appearance, it still told the story well overall, again incorporating veterans' memories. The idea of showing how a pilot reached the frontline in 1940 was also a pleasing differentiator from the rest of the straightforward documentary approach of the other programmes.

It also must be remembered this was designed for a mainstream Sunday-night audience. I suspect the BBC's thinking was that those sufficiently interested by the McGregor programme may well have been inspired to watch Holland's programme, broadcast a few days later, to gain more insight. Anyway, a programme featuring lustrously sharp Castle Air-shot air-to-air images of all the aircraft involved can't be all that bad.

The Battle of Britain, then, was covered in fine style - extensively, intelligently and authoritatively. It wasn't just marked by following a single well-trodden path, but rather with a kaleidoscope of perspectives, taking in scholarly and technical reviews, populist history, first-hand accounts and veterans' memories. Together, they marked the Battle in the comprehensive way that was missing ten years ago. Yes, there was the hand of celebrity, but this was far less overbearing than it could have been and, who knows, the influence of that celebrity could have persuaded some people to watch the programmes which otherwise they may not have done. It must be realised that today's TV audiences are different and more fragmented than ever before, and it isn't surprising broadcasters chose to present the Battle story in different ways.

That was the impressive thing about the Battle coverage. Here was a united effort to create a canon of TV history that would ensure a wide variety of people - not just the ardent aviation enthusiasts - would watch. It was clearly recognised that this was the last significant anniversary with major numbers of increasingly elderly veterans still alive. The ghosts of 1940 will become ever greater in number in the next few years - these programmes were a worthy testament to them.

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2010-11-22 - Nigel Betteridge
I watched most of the programmes you refer to above. I enjoyed watching them, and I enjoyed reading your review of them.

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