Not gonna lie…this wasn’t what I was expecting. I was expecting classic footage of World War II dog fights, and bombing missions and cool stuff like that. Stuff that despite happening more than 60 years ago and has no real point, is still gripping for some unknown reason. That’s what I was expecting. What I got wasn’t that.
Royal Air Force at War could be one of the most misleading titles ever. Yes, these films were released during war time, but they don’t show the acts of war. This set includes 24 training and public information films. That’s right. Over 5 hours propaganda films from Britain in the 1940s. Whooooooo.
But shock of shocks, some of these are actually pretty good. The first one I was 3/4 of the way through before I realized it was a propaganda film about not stealing airplane parts. And I could have sworn I knew the actress in it. But I couldn’t find the cast list anywhere. So I don’t know.
The training videos are pretty mind numbing. And it should scare any British person that they actually had to show these video’s to new recruits. It might be because we live in a time with tons of war movies, and war video games and everything else war, but most of the training things seemed pretty straight forward to me.
Film List:
Disc 1:
Bits of our Aircraft are Missing
Discipline and morale
Enemy Interrogation of Prisoners
Gun Turret Drill
The Boulton Paul Turret
Local Boy Makes Good
Disc 2:
The First Thing
Re-Arming a Bomber
R.A.F. Action
Air Sense
Fly Away peter
In The Drink
Sky Giant
Disc 3:
A Fighter has Crashed
Missed Date
Nought Feet
R.A.F. Regiment
Towards the Offensive
We Attack
Front Line Air Force
Night Flight
Royal Air Force At War is presented in 4:3 Fullscreen format and Mono sound.
There’s a Newsreel on every disc.
If you’re starting a new country with brand new citizens, this is a must have DVD for your air force. For anyone else, it borders on interesting from time to time. But it’s pretty bland overall. Even you major history buffs, you’re not going to be learning anything new.
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Koch Vision Presents The Royal Air Force at War: The Unseen Films 1940-1944. Starring The British Air Force. Running time: 310 minutes. Not Rated. Released on DVD: December 9, 2008. Available at Amazon.com.
