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Old 12-17-12, 09:13 PM   #11
Sailor Steve
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Close, but not quite. The 'Messerschmitts' were indeed Rolls-Royce powered, but they were Spanish-built Ha-1112s, built under license duing the 1950s.

No, they didn't stand in for Hurricanes. Though the Hurricane bore the brunt of the battle, in 1966 there were only three flyable airframes in the world. They used all three in the movie.

The bombers were also built in Spain under license, CASA 2.111s.

The sturzkampflugeugs ("Stukas") were radio-controlled models.

You might as well also complain about the Spitfires, which were mostly late-war models that weren't around in 1940.

As for Tora! Tora! Tora!, again not quite. All the planes were made from American trainers, and all were seriously modified to look very much like the originals. The Mitsubishi A6M2 'Zeroes' were built from AT-6 Texans (what the Brits call the 'Harvard'). Except for the join lines where the outer wing pieces meet the center section they are almost indistinguishable from the original.

The Aichi D3Y 'Vals' and Nakajima B5N 'Kates' were reconstucted from Vultee BT-13 trainers, so extensively that former Lt. Cmdr. Zenji Abe, who flew a Kate at Pearl Harbor, said "... it was an exact copy of the real Val in every detail."
http://www.toratoratora.com/historyrebuilt.html

So you're laughing at the most exact replicas possible at the time. As for Midway, the less said about that piece of garbage the better. Yes, they did use a scene from Battle Of Britain in the movie. They also used one in Das Boot. And the attacking British planes in that movie were indeed surplus Harvards, not modified at all.
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