Posts from — May 2009

It’s stories like this that get me thinking about saving sites of historical importance for future generations. Of course funding is always an issue but it’s  surprising to me that Bletchley Park struggles to find the financial support it needs.

Maybe I’m wrong about this but it would seem to me that if Bletchley were in the States it would be financially secure for two reasons. Clearly there’s more money out there to spread around but Is it also the case that Americans value their history more than we do? Does a thousand years of history make the British complacement?

A grateful nod to the volunteers that continue to offer their time and money in support of East Anglia’s old airbases.

Happy Warriors has today been awarded funding.

Great news, can’t wait to kick on with the project. This will allow us to complete some vital interviews with surviving veterans and to film a few reconstruction-style sequences in and around Seething.

I recently had the chance to speak with a British veteran of the Normandy Campaign for a few minutes at the local library. He described landing on the beaches in a Sherman tank and, coming under heavy fire it was eventually destroyed. A small group of them were pinned down for a time with only pistols to fight with. They survived and eventually found a replacement tank which got them through to the end of the war.

There were a few tables set out with memorabilia and a box of random photographs that were free to take. I can’t resist a found photograph.

Some of the most interesting (and surely terrifying) missions flown by the 448th saw them come under attack by the German jet fighter the Me262. A generally little known but much lauded aircraft among fans the Schwalbe (Swallow) prooved to be a dangerous foe for American bomber crews on their daylight bombing raids. Luckily for them it’s production and implementation in the war was bungled and mismanaged meaning encounters with them were relatively rare.

Click to watch

There are patterns to the negativity we sometimes feel when engaged creatively over a long period of time.

Read this book, it helps. Once recognised they can be shooed away and I can get on with my to-do list.