Warbird Information Exchange

LOL!

This still is edited from the short clip available for preview download (low rez; free) or purchase (high rez; definitely not free) at http://www.britishpathe.com/. It's Gentile and Shangri-La (not to mention Norley, Millikan, Godfrey and Hobert, I think his name was), and is about 1:35 minutes long. The part where he whips Shangri-La into his parking spot is neat.

Notice his RAF Life Jacket straps flapping in the breeze in this shot ... hmm, wonder if this cut was staged? Watch the entire clip and you'll see that it is - it's out of sequence in the film, but he gets into the frappin' kite with the straps dangling way out in the breeze. C'mon, Don, try to make it look real! Great film you can download by searching their site for P.51 (no, not P-51. That won't get you there).

The BritishPathe site has many such awesome short flicks available ...

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So, there I was downloading and watching the CRAP out of some 8AF videos over at BritishPathe.com (sleep is for wimps!) ... low rez, but good stuff nonetheless for my own previewing pleasure. Gosh, there's some good stuff over there! Looks like the old credit card is going to get a serious workout (zero balances on your cards means you don't love airplanes!).

Anyway, while watching one film of Gen. Eisenhower during his visit to Debden on 11 April 1944 to present Gentile, Blakeslee, and, oh yeah, Bob Johnson of the 56th, with DSCs, it looks like the cameraman (God bless you and all your descendants, my son!) decided that it would be a good deal to go stand by the runway and film some returning airplanes. Lo and behold, looky who is returning early with a rough engine ...

This is very neat for a couple of reasons: first, as I speculate on my site, it establishes for a fact that Don had his full scoreboard on the airplane 3 days after getting his last kill. Second . . . well, hell, it's Shangri-La flying . . . you need another reason, bee-awch?! By the way, according to the 336 FS daily history I have, that's John Godfrey flying SL. He took her on this day's mission (but aborted, as I said) because Don was otherwise occupied. Sadly, this film was shot only two days before Don decided to see how low he could go while buzzing the 336 FS dispersal. OOPS! He's darn lucky he didn't kill himself - or plow into the crowd gathered round his hardstand. Somewhere there's film of the crash ... give us time ...

In 2002, I visited the exact spot of farmland a good ways west of Debden where SL ended up, and I have "Then and Now" pics on my site. Yes, I kept kicking the dirt for dzus fasteners, etc, but didn't find anything ... CRAP! And yes, I saw 'the pond' (I know it's 'the' one because none other than the landowner's son took me around) SL was supposedly pushed into. It wasn't, never was, and didn't ever go into said pond in any way. I explain all on my site.

/Wade

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Hi,

you can download this footage for free ?? I think I'd like to give it a try

Paul

Yes, you can download a LOW-rez version free of any film. Doesn't look half-bad at all if kept at the original size in RealPlayer or whatever you use. I'm doing a ton of them this way ...

I did, however, purchase two (so far) high-rez films. Much better quality, and you can view it larger. What you get is a download file which you can keep on your harddrive and of course put on a CD for archival purposes. Took seconds to download, and I'm very happy with the quality, tho they are NOT cheap ... each film (no matter the length) is just under 30 GBP (ballpark $45 USD - or whatever the Xchange rate is now).

Wade

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