Extracted this bit of footage from a recorded programme sent to me by a friend in Holland. Spitfires on patrol during Sicily/ Italy invasions. Apologies for Dutch commentary, but its still good footage!!
More colour footage, RAF Lancasters, USAF Fortresses and RAF Night Bombing. More colour footage to follow of Tanks and things.
Cool, the Spits had slipper tanks. Not sure I've seen colour footage of wartime Spits before. Thanks 51H! Spits on the ground have chin radiators while the airborne shots are of "normal" looking Spits perhaps fitted with the later, smaller filter...or none at all! First Spits in Sicily, airborne ones in Italy proper? What's the deal with the three-colour bombs at the start of the second film?
51H, those are bloody marvelous films. As Andy said, rare to find frontline colour footage. I have tried slowing down the Spit film several times but just can't get a clear enough grab to see the squadron code. The 'G' doesn't actually help on its own. However, I think it could be GN which would make it 249 Squadron. However, there was a period when they used 'T' during this time, though they reverted back to GN again. I need to go back to Spitfires over Sicily by Brian Cull to see if I can gleen any more details. Have ben rather busy. Will check tomorrow. Thanks for posting them. Did you do the flv conversion or is that how they came. If you have the originals could you try to get a screen grab of the shots when the Spits peel away? FLV really degrades fine details as I found when trying to enlarge the screen shots.
I thought I could see GT on the first Spit that peels away. Mind you, the last "full" Spit that peels away, when I froze it, looked like she had SW!
Doubt it was GT mate - 156 Squadron flying Wellies and then Lancs. Could be 683 Squadron because Cull says they had no squadron code! Which may explain the single letter 'G' (?) after the roundal - I thought it was just bad camera angle or quality of the film
Even freeze framing the original does not give a clear identification apart from the 1st peeler gives a clear G. The 2nd one looks to be as was suggested either N or W. Personally I would say it's N. But that is by no means certain.
