The Aerial Combat etc Disappointing

B0B was made years before Tora Tora Tora.
The effects were very immersive for 1969.

Aerial combat was on par with TopGun - passable.

The scene of the Heinkels being attacked by the Spitfires while attacking northern England is one of my favourite parts of the movie. Excellent music and excellent filming. When the Spit does the victory roll over the airfield, it makes me proud to have been a member of the RAF.

The aerial combat in Battle of Britain was disappointing in comparison to what other flying movies made before 1969?

The airfield bombing, strafing runs and Stuka (they ARE models) shots ARE weak by modern standards and were so-so for 1969 - some of the timing of ground explosions compared to the aircraft attacking are mistimed. To the reviewer who thought that some of the ground explosions of aircraft looked like cardboard... Well even in 1969 when the warbird movement was in its genesis - people recognized that blowing up real aircraft was not on. But those Hurricanes being blown apart - the fuselage of a Hurricane was wood and canvas - it looks pretty good.

But you do a REAL dis-service suggesting the dogfights are weak. Real pilots flew real planes behind a camera plane flying the real tactics of the era. It is NOT whizz bang special effects of modern movies. But the tactics are authentic and one pilot died a real death during the filming flying those tactics. The climactic sequence has over 27 real aircraft on screen at the one moment - dogfighting like crazy. Given those the had just flown out of shot and those that were about to fly into shot it is pretty apparent the producers put a huge amount of effort into getting a mass of planes in the air in the confusing swirl of a dogfight. Read any book on the making of the movie and you will find that for every 20 seconds of film shot it took a whole day of planned and co-ordinated flying to pull it off.

There WAS one effect I always considered a bit weak. The cockpit shot of a Spitfire head up display orange gunsight ring as a Me 109 was gunned down. Shame on me - I later learned that the "effect" was produced by flying a rare two seat Spitfire - with camera in front seat and a real gunsight illuminated while a pilot who could barely see over the camera flew formation on the 109 from the back seat. Having since acquired a working gunsight I now realize the "effect" was 100% authentic and have all the more admiration for those who flew in the real battle 1940 and again in 1968 recreating the battle.

I think its brilliant. They never had things like the technology to film intense dogfights like in Top Gun, or CGI back then.

Also with Tora Tora Tora much of it was filmed from the ground because it was a ground assault where BOB was mainly from the air. They used a mix of real aircraft, studio models and huge scale remote controlled planes.

I'd like to see a CGI remastered version, but only to the level where some of the etched in explosions are replaced with CG and a few tracer lines where you see the tracers whizzing out to the target and blowing a few chunks off like you see in old ww2 footage.

Aside from that i wouldnt touch the film its near perfect.

I thought the flying looked absolutely great but some of the exploding planes were a little too obvious as a film trick. The airfield bombing may not have been up to par, but the scenes of London under attack made up for it in spades.

It's a long time since I saw TTT, so cannot comment.

My son is in his ATC Battle of Britain day parade today, so last night we watched the movie (again!).

I have to say I think the dog fight scenes are still amazing. Sure the stukas are models and some of the aerial explosions are RC aircraft, but even some of these are pretty convincing. The final HE111 crash into the sea at the climax of the Battle for the air sequence looks pretty good IMHO.In the same sequence you see a spitfire crash into a beach , which is also well done. Incidentally it has the only dialogue in that portion of the film, and you realise that the WAF wireless operators must have heard the last moments of many young.men

The thing which is still breathtaking and was more so when shown on a large west end cinema screen is the 'maelstrom' scenes where planes are weaving everywhere. This is unique in any film I can think of, and couldn't be done today. I know there are probably more spitfires flying now, but not as many ME109/HE111 , albeit the Spanish versions.

I have the 2-disc DVD with optional Walton score, and this seems to have a few scenes I don't remember from the cinema. It could be my memory but there seem to be more shots of a cockpit view of a line of wingmen. This is usually of 109's but these show how close the aircraft flew.

I think the only way the film could be improved with CGI is how "Dark Blue World" did it, with cgi tracer and cartridge case effects added to original unused BoB scenes.

[deleted]