Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Dunkirk

Yeah, quite a bit of dramatic license. I agree about the first main character getting out of more tight spots than ten lucky cats. For a two hour movie there was really little dialogue; mostly visual drama. And the flotilla of civy boats shown in the rescue was hardly sufficient for moving more than a couple hundred soldiers.

And the pilot -- ditching at sea with friendlies all around sure seemed the better option than the beach landing and though just a private pilot, I wondered if if keeping the gear up and going in on the planes belly in that sand would have been much safer. Unless of course it was exceedingly hard packed which he couldn't have known.

Much less bloodshed than SPR or BOB and some others, but still not a relaxing movie at least for me as it brought home the horror with which some shoulders died particularly trapped in a sinking ship's hold.

Yep; thought he was long gone and down before he came back into view and shot down one more fighter before a dead stick landing even later.

Well, those Spitfires were really badass fighters....

Excellent observation. My first thought was he was going to refuel and fly out, but if he had intentions of destroying the plane (which he did), why bother with a risky dead stick on sand where digging in the gear would have been disastrous?

Yeah Tom Hardy flew the Spitfire that had more ammo, and could glide longer than any other Spitfire ever built...

or any other Spitfire ever portrayed in a Movie...

and the one reason he didn't belly land on the beach...

Hollywood always loves to put planes where the landing gear won't come down,
so they have to hand crank it.. and they ALWAYS get it all the way down,
0.005 seconds before the wheels touch the ground...

what I also thought was pretty stupid.. why didn't he ditch or land near where the British
Troops were occupying the beach? Or does it make you a hero to shoot down 5 planes
and then landing to destroy your fighter so you can get captured by the enemy so you
can become a POW?

Seen it.

Agreed, with appropriate GCI it coulda been an epic, ya just never got an image of what 300,000 British soldiers on a beach looked like, nor the volume of small craft needed to lift them off. No sense of the enormity of the accomplishment.

I'm glad Jorge gave thumbs up to the aerial combat sequences, otherwise I woulda thought 'em too slow in terms of what the pilot saw and perceived. I'm recalling two great sequences from the Battle of Britain movie, in particular where a new Spit pilot is shot down in flames in a catastrophic attack that lasts about one second, and ends with an equally brief flash of the victorious Bf 109 diving by out of the sun. And another wonderful shot where a line of little dots against the clouds resolves itself in moments to a squadron of Spitfires in a head-on attack. In this Dunkirk movie the guy has time go down low and watch his buddy ditch, and THEN catch up to the original German aircraft, still in sight. Likewise, he musta been packing an awful lot of ammo in that Spit, next time I see this movie I'm bringing a stopwatch.

It was a way cool shot I thought of that same Spit gliding like an arrow dead-stick over the beach (even if it was GCI), but when he got his last victory even the drunk Mexican gangster-type guy in the seat next to next to me turned to his woman and said "How'd he do that?", and I too wondered why he didn't just turn that Spit around to land with the Brits.

Two thumbs up on probably the best depiction yet of what it was like to be on the receiving end of a Stuka attack. And kudos to the movie for giving the defending French their due, for those in the audience who were paying attention at least.

OK, coulda been better, but in this day and age, to make a movie like this?

Birdwatcher gives it two thumbs up.

Spitfire squadron code LC was not employed by a Spitfire squadron in the war and the serial numbers displayed also dont
belong to Spitfires from the war.

The movie uses Mk1 and Mk5 variants, the later of which wasn't actually produced until 1941.

The Messerschmitt for the movie is actually a post-war Hispano Buchon.(Merlin engine)

Bf109-E series (inverted DB601) were the actual Me109 variants used at Dunkirk.

There were other mistakes and temporal anomalies as well:

The headstamps on the .303 blanks portraying live ammunition fired by the actors portraying soldiers were from 1983 through 2009.

The socks worn by several of the actors portraying British soldiers were nylon, British soldiers of the day would have worn wool socks. The nurse on the hospital ship is wearing underwear from Walmart, which wasn't around in 1940.

In the line of Grenadiers, the actor portraying the 17th soldier from the water's edge has a tattoo on his arm commemorating the death of his mother in 2004!

When the boat arrives back to the English coast, just over the cliffs out of sight is a McDonald's restaurant. The first McDonald's restaurant wasn't established until 1955.

In the scene where the actors portraying the owner and crew of the Moonstone are looking up at the plane portraying a Bf109E flying by, the International Space Station as well as several GPS and telecomm satellites are in orbit high above the plane.

I could go on.....

Just saw it and was disappointed.

Think I'll save my money, after watching a dismal trailer and reports here.

I saw no Mark 5 Spits....

R9649 = Mk.Vb EP122
R9632 = Mk.Ia AR213
R9612 = Mk.Ia X2650

https://scarfandgoggles.wordpress.com/tag/tom-friedkin/


EP122 and AR213 are owned by Tom Friedkin.
in fact the Friedkin boys own a few more!
X4650, SM832, JG891, ML417

Airworthy Spitfires of the world:

http://www.military-airshows.co.uk/spitaw.htm

and deserving tribute to a genuine Bf109E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzUUlO6ihwE

Well then they had the Mark V modified to look like a Mark 1

none of the Spits carried 20 mm cannons that I saw...

and when they were firing on the HE 111 and ME 109s, the Spits
firing indicated Browning 303s...

The MEs and HEs, were returning fire with cannon...

Some people are not happy unless there are gays, libians, and blacks with white blonds in the movies.

You are a very observant fellow -- I know; you are Sherlock Holmes come to live incognito in Idaho. 😀

On another note my wife was reading some online site wherein "some French" were quite upset with Dunkirk as it seems they thought they were given short shrift in the movie.

I come to believe most of you would bitch about good sex and good booze.. I saw it thought it was a pretty good movie...

Saw this film with my wife yesterday. Found it rather tedious and dreary, should have saved my money and saw it on re-reruns.

The wife has been wanting to go see this movie for a while now.

When I told her the British soldiers were wearing the wrong socks and some chick had Walmart underwear on she cursed a bit and lost all interest.

And perhaps if no Battle of Britain, No more USSR. Like you the more I read, the more I wonder.

I suspect it would be next to impossible to make a WW2 movie these days and have everything technically correct. I watched Hacksaw Ridge on TV last night. Saw thousands of rounds fired, and don't recall seeing anyone reloading. One dude shot his grease gun at least 50-60 times, all on one 30 round magazine. Same way on the BAR, that had a 20 round mag. That's just how it works. I remember watching some western, not sure which one, and there in the distance was a highway with cars.