Classic British Flight Sim

I know you can't really cover 90 years of RAF highs (& lows) in 90 mins. I was very disappointed in it....perhaps in 10 years...[when a great deal many more with a real tale to tell will have earnt their wings of a different sort], there might be a series that does justice to the history of the RAF.

I was pleased XD818 got a look in, but no footage of Vulcans, Victors, Hunters, Meteors...no mention of the first RAF jet aircraft, no Shackletons, Nimrods...no mention of the Dambusters, though the modern day 617 Sqn are represnted, as is a modern day QRA scramble from RAF Coningsby, featuring one of the Eurofighters....
a question on which....at take of the landing light go out almost at point of take off. Would these be linked to micro-switches in the legs, & when they unload the lights go off...or was our pilot just quick to flick the switch.

If you didn't see it you might watch it online & have different thoughts, but I was very let down by the contect - or lack of.

Bob

Didn't work for me...Too disjointed and airy fairy. I thought it was a bit of a waste of space really :-(

I too was disappointed, although some of the footage I had never seen before . I thought the fairly recent former pilot sounded rather depressed about his role in the whole thing , and if I'm truthful I was put off by the current personnel who seemed to talk nothing but management-speak . The series of 2 or 3 years ago about fast jet training seemed to me to be a much pleasanter reflection of what the RAF aims to be

Garry Russell wrote:

forthbridge wrote: Looked in too late.

But, never mind, I can select 'English' BBC on the channel menu, so I shall remember to do that tomorrow evening, with a tinny or two :flying:

Do you get translation subtitles when you do that Jim???


Garry

:doho: :doho:
Missed it! But, subtitles not usually needed Garry, unless I choose BBC South West, and they're using the local dialect. I can understand Scouse, (Brookside), Mancunian (Corrie), Cockney (Eastenders), Geordie (My Gran is one!), Yorkshire (Emmerdale) and Brum (Life on Mars)...... all *heard* rather than watched..... ;-)

I think the editing was atrocious. Very little thought had gone into representing 90 years of history of the RAF. There must be years of amazing footage that they could have used but they seemed to have spent most of their budget on John Peters. There was far too much footage of talking heads driving cars along motorways. The director seemed to have a thing about filming in and from cars. There was about ten minutes driving around the desert in an armoured vehicle and about the same driving around Berlin after a raid. They even filmed John Peters driving and talking his way to East Germany to watch JCBs digging up some old concrete silos. You could probably have condensed the interesting stuff into 20 minutes. The only bit that really moved me was the film of the Zeppelin looming over the 1930 FA Cup final. But that link to the history of the RAF was rather tenuous.

You had to feel sorry for John Peters, though. It was ironic that he spent most of the programme talking about how they were all trained to be killers and the whole raison d'etre of the RAF was to kill enemies in the defence of Queen and Country. Then, in almost the last frame he sadly admitted that he felt a bit of a failure because when his time finally came, through no fault of his own, he was unable to kill anybody and sat out the opportunity in a prison.

A disappointing story for an individual but hardly the backbone for a history of the RAF. It was well below the BBC's usual standard.

Ian

I have to confess my ignorance. Who is John Peters?

He was a Tornado pilot shot down in the first Gulf War and was captured

He became a spokeman for the modern RAF tactics etc after his repatriation

Perhaps the more military minded could explain it better than me

Garry

Ah, thanks for that. It goes a long way to explaining why he was so downbeat about the whole thing, which I found very puzzling, since my ex RAF colleagues seemed to have loved their time in the service

What a strange programme. I mean there were some good bits, I found John Peter's (?) its actually quite moving, but as a history of the RAF it wasn't anything of the sort.

Kind regards

John

Ps 90 years of the RAF gets a big TV prog... I bet 100 years of the Fleet Air Arm gets nothing, nada, niet, bupkiss...zip.

http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/server/show/nav.7027

I'm glad I'm not the only one who didn't think the programme was very good. I'm just waiting for the flak from the friends I texted to tell them it was on TV that night.