Ive got an interesting byline to the dambusters story,during the early 30s, there was a young Englishman by the name of George Heathershaw. He was a brilliant up an coming mechcanical engineer. However his political leanings lent him to believe what was happing over in Germany, should be repeated in England, and so he became a brown shirter. When war broke out, and George was in London the Authority's grabed him. George was put to work for rolls merlin and eventually he worked on the dambusters lanc's. Apparently the motors where given more torque for a lower rev. I presume to reduce noise and be able to have a lower stall speed (fly slower). After the war George was given 24 hours to leave England. He ended up in Indonesia and after 20 years or so had a huge engineering factory with 300 odd employees.. then the country was nationalised and George was once again kicked out with nothing. He ended up in Australia by now a broken man, he died only a few years ago on a little bannana farm on the north coast, i rebuilt the old bannana shed into a reasonable abode for the old gentleman, at the behest of his daughter, who by the way is a doctor in the local town... quiet an intersting story to me and shows that intellect does not allways let you exceed, and that life is a gamble...
Ive got an interesting byline to the dambusters story,during the early 30s, there was a young Englishman by the name of George Heathershaw. He was a brilliant up an coming mechcanical engineer. However his political leanings lent him to believe what was happing over in Germany, should be repeated in England, and so he became a brown shirter. When war broke out, and George was in London the Authority's grabed him. George was put to work for rolls merlin and eventually he worked on the dambusters lanc's. Apparently the motors where given more torque for a lower rev. I presume to reduce noise and be able to have a lower stall speed (fly slower). After the war George was given 24 hours to leave England. He ended up in Indonesia and after 20 years or so had a huge engineering factory with 300 odd employees.. then the country was nationalised and George was once again kicked out with nothing. He ended up in Australia by now a broken man, he died only a few years ago on a little bannana farm on the north coast, i rebuilt the old bannana shed into a reasonable abode for the old gentleman, at the behest of his daughter, who by the way is a doctor in the local town... quiet an intersting story to me and shows that intellect does not allways let you exceed, and that life is a gamble...
In those days political leaning meant a lot regardless of ability.
G'day all, I'm with you Verboten, "Cry Havoc and unleash the Nerds of war!". Dambusters will be an excellent movie to be redone, especially by Jackson. The bi-plane vs gorilla scenes from "King Kong" were excellent. Some useless trivia for you all, one of the fighter pilots in the 2005 version of King Kong who shoots the big ape was Rick Baker. Now Rick played Kong in the 1976 version of King Kong (Where he climbs the World Trade Centre) dressed up in a big ape suit.
Actually Mel Gibson was seriously looking at doing a re-make of Dambusters back in the 90's, but never got around to it (His version would have probably been 617 Squadron attacking Dams in Israel). A problem that came up then, and may do so for Jackson now, was the what to do about the dog. In the 1954 movie, which was pretty historically accurate and used real Lancaster bombers, it depicted the 617 squadron commander, Guy Gibson (Played by British Actor Richard Todd), and his beloved pet dog called "Nigger" (It was a black labrador) who was also the squadron mascot. Now on the morning of the raid before the squadron took off, Nigger was killed when he was run over by a car. Gibson was devastated and, in tribute to his pet, requested that the radio code that would be used by the aircrews to confirm that the Mohne Dam had been breached would be "Nigger". So in the 1954 movie, when the British weren't so politically correct, the word Nigger was used. However, when the film was released in the USA around the same time, the censors there dubbed in the word "Trigger" in it's place (Obviously they didn't want to upset all the "Good-ol boys" of the KKK in the deep south). So it will interesting to see whether the Jackson remake of the movie will be historically accurate (Nigger) or politically correct (Trigger). It could even feature Richard Todd in a cameo role as he is still alive at 87.
Speaking of Todd, did you all know he actually fought at Pegasus Bridge on D-Day? He put his budding acting career on hold when WW2 broke out and joined the British Army. He was an officer with the 7th Battalion (LI) of The Parachute Regiment when they jumped into Normandy to reinforce the 2nd "Oxs & Bucks" who had glided in. He actually met up with Major John Howard on Pegasus Bridge to help secure it. After the war, when he had returned to his acting career, he would appear in two films in which this scene was recreated: in D-Day the Sixth of June (1956) he plays Lt. Col. John Wynter, and in The Longest Day (1962) he played Major Howard himself.
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