[ARC5] Oh, Brother...

[jay_coward at agilent.com]

Yes this was the camera platform for "The Battle of Britain" and I graduated West Essex High in 1971.The aircraft had been there for several years and the cockpit had been left open to the weather.Sad.Don't know what ever happened to it.Long gone to the scrapper or restored?
Jay

-----Original Message-----
From: Todd, KA1KAQ [mailto:ka1kaq at gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, October 04, 2005 11:34 AM
To: jay_coward at agilent.com
Cc: gewhite at crosslink.net; arc5 at ix.netcom.com; arc5 at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [ARC5] Oh, Brother...

On 10/4/05, jay_coward at agilent.com <jay_coward at agilent.com> wrote:
> As a little sideline to Gordon's comments; I grew up in a tiny town next to Caldwell N.J. and my high school was in West Caldwell.Our bus route took us by Caldwell-Wright.At that time there was a B-25 sitting on the field and under the cockpit windscreen was written"The Battle of Britain".All the plexiglass "blisters" were optically clear bubbles for the cameras.

No idea when this was Jay, but they did use a B-25 as a camera
platform to film the movie of the same title in 1968-69. Probably the
best footage we'll ever see, since the movie makers actually bought
surplussed Spanish-made ME-109s and used the Spanish AF HE-111s for
filming, as well as Spits and Hurricanes. Of course, the german
examples had long since been re-powered with Merlins, but it's still
good stuff. Some of the shots show up in other movies.

I've seen pictures of a weird B-17 like you describe, with a 5th
engine in the nose. Also seem to remember some that substituted one
engine for the test example. Another interesting one is at Evergreen
Aviation in McMinneville Oregon. It was outfitted for the Skyhook
experiments and was actually used in the James Bond movie Thunderball,
but they have returned it to a more typical WWII configuration.

Couldn't get inside to see any of the radio gear.

de Todd/'Boomer'  KA1KAQ