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BBC 'Tankies' in January.


ajmac

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Not a bad evening all round, especially with the Neil Armstrong programme beforehand and the Bonneville one after.

 

It's always struck me that the M3 should have been British, not American. It looks like the product of some mad Victorian inventor, just needs a steam engine!

 

Andy

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I enjoyed it, the period footage was on the whole matched well with the time frame of the first program, no Tigers or Panthers rushing by as he discussed the Libyan battles! They didn't mention the Sherman in North Africa, but I guess that is to leave enough meat for part two.

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They didn't mention the Sherman in North Africa, but I guess that is to leave enough meat for part two.

 

I thought the same, although they did show some footage of the Sherman in North Africa about 3/4's of the way through the programme. As you say they are probably waiting to use the majority of Sherman footage they have in the second part.

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just watched the second episode, I thought it was well presented, good effort to match the footage to the right period (not perfect of course but no early shots when they are talking about Germany in 1945)

 

So a decent "snapshot" history of the Filthy 5th I think

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  • 2 weeks later...

There are some images from the Tankies Doc at: www/facebook.com/britainsspirit in an album titled BBC Tanks. There was a huge amount of reconstruction which wasn't used which would have made the Jake Wardrop character's story more thorough. There was originally a big CGI budget which was condensed to the rather simple 'tanks on the map' part. The POW scene would have been bigger in part 2 and in part 1 the original intention was to have a tank being lowered by crane onto the docks whilst the crews sat around waiting. This was a really big set which hardly got a look in....

In terms of MV action. The Morris 15cwt CS8 and the Jeep featured more in the filming but got lost as it was edited. The BBC commisssioners appartently have a problem between dramatisation and reconstruction so if they think it's too much of the former it comes out....

Daft really as they've already paid for it. Anyway hope this might be of interest.

Simon

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A good follow on read to "Tankies" would be "By Tank into Normandy" by Stuart Hills. He recounts his experience in the Sherwood Rangers as they trained on the Sherman DD tanks ( A very interesting first hand experience) then landed on D Day or in Stuart's case escaped from his DD tank as it sank and spent D Day on a raft just off shore. Back to Normandy with a fresh tank then fighting all the way through to VE day in Germany.

 

While he includes the horror and personal tragedy of war in his book, what struck me about Stuart's experience was the "Tank broken, here's another one from stores" the logistics described were truly amazing! He also describes small and large scale tank on tank battles.

Edited by simonm
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A good follow on read to "Tankies" would be "By Tank into Normandy" by Stuart Hills. He recounts his experience in the Sherwood Rangers as they trained on the Sherman DD tanks ( A very interesting first hand experience) then landed on D Day or in Stuart's case escaped from his DD tank as it sank and spent D Day on a raft just off shore. Back to Normandy with a fresh tank then fighting all the way through to VE day in Germany.

 

While he includes the horror and personal tragedy of war in his book, what struck me about Stuart's experience was the "Tank broken, here's another one from stores" the logistics described were truly amazing! He also describes small and large scale tank on tank battles.

 

I've read and reread this book, absolutely brilliant.

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