The 'Tigers' in Kelly's Hero's remains a fine example of making an effort to get it right. A LOT of films just don't bother with anything more than painting it grey and slapping a cross on it.
@@aarosundvall Well that aswell as a working 88mm FlaK, bunch of MG42's, some other guns I believe, a few thousand rounds of ammo for everything and a bunch of swastikas aswell as other Nazi collectibles. Oh and the firing mechanism, was restorable on the Panther, as far as I read. I'm kinda glad this stuff goes to a Museum now x)
The Spanish Army Tank Corps: "Are we finally going to see some action?" Higher ups: "Nope, some movie needs you to pretend to be the Axis powers from WW2 again. Better get to painting those tanks once again." Spanish Army Tank Corps: ".........."
The Germans did capture several Shermans and used them against American forces!They called them Beute Panzer(Trophy Tank).Granted these are Patton class tanks that weren’t in the service till the early 1950s!
In the Bridge Too Far clip that shows tanks moving away from camera the last tank has its track off the ground. The Brits and their cunning use of decoys.
This was taken from IMDB… “The producers were only able to locate four of the many Sherman tanks seen on the screen. The rest were plastic molds set on top of 88" Land Rovers. Volkswagen Beetle chassis were used for German Kubelwagens. The tank treads didn't reach the ground, but the movie is edited so that this isn't noticeable (except in the section after Elliott Gould cries, "Roll the fuckers!") there are shots of the tanks rolling over the bridge. One tank is seen silhouetted against the background and its tracks are clearly not moving as fast as they should be if the tank were real). At about fifty-seven minutes into this movie, as the Shermans are heading up the road, the last Sherman seen (the fifth one) is floating a few inches off the ground. If you look quickly, you'll just see the rear left wheel from one of the Land Rovers.”
@@HollywoodMarine0351 The Sherman that crosses the Bailey Bridge (scene with Elliott Gould) is a fiberglass replica. The reason for this was that that bridge was not strong enough to take the full weight of a real Sherman.
@freebeerfordworkers They were converted AT-6 aircraft made to look like Typhoons. The 'P-47 Thunderbolts' which appear early in the movie in an airfield scene were also converted AT-6s. Some AT-6s were also modified to look like Fw-190s but they don't appear in the final cut of the film.
What I find hysterical as a former artilleryman is the exact same echo explosion sound effect used in literally every movie from this era, along with the “bullet ricochet” sound.
@@LordVader1094 They even show up in spaghetti westerns too. I don't know who recorded (poorly) the "artillery sound" originally, but I think it shows up in the 1950s. It's the Wilhelm Scream of military movies.
Sound dept is supposed to do this, but they didn't fuss too much with it. In Jurassic Park, they had trouble trying to come up with convincing dinosaur sounds, and used all kinds of sounds to try and do it, even blending them together. I always find it a joke when they show a 75mm or 88mm shell going off, and it looks like some big fire crackers tied together . The real thing was not like that, just look at actual footage from WWII
I read somewhere a Spanish soldier complaining that the only thing they ever did in the '60s and '70s was portray extras in Hollywood movies, either as WW2 forces or Roman legions. 8,000 Spanish infantry portrayed a Roman army in Spartacus for example.
I know it's not a WW2 tank, but Red Dawn convinced me there isn't any excuse for poor mock-ups. They made a mock up of a soviet tank (I think a T-72) out of a bulldog so convincing that they got a visit from the authorities to ask them how they got it.
I saw these films in theaters when they were first released. My father was a Combat Infantry Scout in the 95th Division 3rd Army. Dad received the Silver Star by order of General Patton for the Battle of Metz. General Patton pinned Father’s Combat Infantry Badge on him. Father passed away at the age of 90.
The scene where he jumps on a tank and directs traffic actually happened. I read his book and he relates this tale with the added authority of being the driver of the tank Patton stood on.
Really pleased you did this video. I am an older type and remember seeing all these films at the time of their release. My friend was a keen builder of model tanks and pointed out all the substitute modern designs in the movies. It was interesting that 'Kelly's Heroes' which was really an action comedy caper strove for such historical accuracy with its vehicles. The producers of all the films listed still did a very good job with what was available to them at the time.
Historically accurate yet some how an American GI in France is using a Russian sniper rifle I guess it's possible a German sniper picked up a mosin on the Eastern front and choose to bring it to the Western front when he was reassigned which I could see it was "better" than some German snipers which were DMR optics pressed into sniper rules which German snipers hated but then why would an American choose to use it as his primarily weapon he has no way to resupply ammo I'm a gun guy and I his has bothered me since I first watched them move as a kid I was able to put together that the Russian in enemy at the gates were using the same rifle as in my favorite move Kelly's heros
@@sqike001ton I'm always wondering how things like this slip through, yet It's always things like this that are criticized in movies. Kellys Heroes is pretty old, maybe that's it but it wouldn't have been so hard to find an M1903 or something and even nowadays film studios get it wrong.
@@steveonmareisland5268 Yugoslavia never had any Tigers. The only other country other than Germany to use them were the Hungarians who received thirteen examples. France and Romania used a couple of captured models briefly. Tigers never operated after Germany's surrender in 1945 and the only operational Tiger left is 131 which was captured in '43 in Tunisia by the British. Yugoslavia after the war only ever operated American or Soviet models of tank. Syria used Panzer IVs after the war between 1950 and 1967 and France used captured Panthers until '49.
@@trazyntheinfinite9895 It still costs more, because you have to get someone to actually make the mockups out of the plywood, and also there is only so much you can do with plywood, many of these shots aren't just backgrounds but are the hero shots, which would show up the limitations of the plywood until the audience were rolling in the aisles.
@@trazyntheinfinite9895 only for faraway and static shots. Not much for moving tanks tho. Also, when you shoot a movie on foreign land and knows that it's a high-budget film, some of the locals can be quite snarky by overpricing materials to get some of dat sweet dollar
"Not always easy"? Realistically probably not even a priority. Production teams probably figured moviegoers wouldn't know/care. You forgot the decent audie Murphy flick to hell and back using ridiculously bad stand-ins for the famous German towed 88s. Btw, I always care. One reason I love saving pvt. Ryan so much, the extreme attention to detail
@@skybuprofen9834 yes fake but they clearly made an effort to make it look real, not just paint an American tank grey or slap some oatmeal on it to look like zimmerit
@@skybuprofen9834 ....yes, it was. But the Tiger/T-34 was nice anyway and it took sometime for me to note the difference. Imagine that scene with an Abrams....😂
The Germans loved captured t 34 when they could get them. I was watching a vid on YT where they were recovering a T34 and when they finally got it far enough out of the lake it was in and it flipped back over, low and behold, it had the iron cross painted over the star.
There is a scene in "Patton" during the Battle of the Bulge where you can briefly see an authentic vintage Sherman M32 tank recovery vehicle roll by in the background.
Also check out the soviet "Liberation" films of the late 60s/early 70s. Especially the first one, which is based on Kusrk, dozens and dozens of tanks on set! Granted, there's a lot of T-55s and T-62s in background (and sometimes an IS-3 in foreground!) but they did have some nice looking mockups of Tigers based on T-44s. (In my opinion, T-44s and T-55s make a better basis for mockup than a T-34, since they're larger and with a more central turret). Funnily enough, I've seen more than one documentary convert some of that film's Tiger footage into black and white to try and pass it off as real footage.
@@Tookan69 At the very end of the first film (about 88 minutes in) several cross right in front of the camera, behind the T-34s. there's also several IS-2s doubling as Panthers, though they're a lot less convincing than the T-44s-as-Tigers.
Most ironically, that in the early film "Stalingrad", wich was maked when Stalin was alive, there are was really outstanding job with German and Soviet armor. There are even was natural Pz 38t. Later in the 60-70s almost all capured German armour was lost due to the different reasons. And T-55/62 started to play german armor in different war movies. Also BTR-152 very often played role of the German halftrack APCs, despite the fact, that it had only wheels)))
Oddball is the greatest American tanker of all time. He was the only person thinking strategically holding his unit in reserve in case the Germans launched a counterattack against Paris or possibly New York.
What's funny about Bridge at Remagen, was that the US Army deployed the M26 Pershing there. A Platoon of five were on hand, though one was undergoing servicing at the time. So the remaining four led the way into town. They also provided overwatch and Fire Support because they were too heavy to get over the bridge. They were ferried over five days later by barge.
I used to do German WW2 reenacting. Got to do several events with the Saving Pvt Ryan Tiger. The best mod I've ever seen was the guys in Colorado that built a Mk IIIJ long barrel on a M-113 chassis. Videos of it are on RU-vid.
The Collings Foundation in Stow, Mass. has reenactments in the fall. They usually have a very convincing Stug III for the op force, with M-4 and M-3's. Wish they could get their Panther running.
For enthusiasts in Europe, the Royal Tank Museum in Bovington, UK has "TankFest" during the summer! When I saw it, they had their Tiger I participate! Rather ironically, there were more British re-enactors dressed as G.I.'s rather than as British soldiers!
I honestly credit all these classic war films with building up my interest in military history, and from there history overall. Plenty of memories in this video.
Yeah and he was also much more slender build. I guess someone saw George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove and thought we should make a Patton movie with him as Patton which couldn't be further from the truth. It's like having 1980's Arnold Schwarzenegger play Abraham Lincoln.
Heard others about it before. Some say it was an accident, the guy did not realise the tank was THIS close, others say it was staged because a second shot was much closer, so either a cameraman was keep to notice, or it was indeed staged. Sure as hell impressed me watching it as a kid
People always bitch about the Pattons. But I’ll give it a pass considering those are Spanish Army members(?) and actual serviced tanks. The fact that they’re real and those are real effects of the “explosions”. Just coordinating that in person must have been an effort all by itself.
Yeah, and Battle of the Bulge in particular tends to get unfairly shit on in this regard. The film does of course, have far more significant problems than the "Actor tanks," but a lot of people talk about it as if it were the only movie ever to use anachronistic , un-mockedup tanks. The M47 does at least have a vaguely similar shape of turret as the Tiger 2 if you squint at it....unlike the even more modern looking M48s in some of these other movies :P
There's a BBC documentary about 1960s Francoist Spain were they show how the country is and when talking about the spanish army they are on the 'Patton' movie set. There's some interesting shots of spanish army officers (with spanish uniforms) giving orders to their soldiers dressed as americans.
The bottom line, it's what they would have on hand. That's why Kelly's Heroes was so freshingly accurate for most of the vehicles, as the Yugoslavians had T-34 Tiger mockups left over from a previous movie filmed there, and they were NOT cobbled together originally for Kelly's Heroes
In the first days of the war in Yugoslavia 1990 the young Croatian army had 15 Sherman tanks and Soviet T-34s pulled out of the museum and re-armed opposite them, the Yugoslav Army had T-55s and T-72s After the action "Flash" and "Storm" in 1995 Sherman tanks and Soviet T-34s have been returned to museums
When I was younger it bothered me that they just didn't use period tanks. That changed after I finished my tour in the Army. Now I love these flicks! The M47 and M48s are some of my favorite tanks and it is so cool to see these dinosaurs doing their thing, even if it is just a movie. These old movies are almost time capsules for Cold War tanks. I get to see tanks in action that were just gate guards or memories of my old NCOs. Unwitting vessels showing historic AFVs from the late '40's to the 60's. I WISH they would have made WWIII movies set in the '50's in Germany with the things!
In many cases, this was the best they could do. Since it was very hard to find original German vehicles and there was no CGI. How many times we saw Texans (T-6) being used as "fighters"? Or Japanese Zeroes? Even when they had original planes, like the P-47s in "Fighter Squadron", the results were inaccurate for various reasons.
My favorite part in Battle of the Bulge is after Telly’s Chaffee gets half the turret blown away and he rolls up in it’s scorched remains, holding the .30 cal. Such a comic book moment.
@@JohnnyJohnsonEsq Unfortunately, my suspension of disbelief has never been quite the same after that scene-- the crew should have been a thin red coating on the interior of what was left of the turret, but realism wouldn't have served the plot, I guess.
In the 1960s French film ,Is Paris Burning ?,set in August 1944,the French Forces are equipped with a lot of genuine Shermans,M8 armoured cars and US half-tracks.Sadly when German armour is portrayed,it appears as some very unconvincing mockups.
The 1955 Czechoslovak war film “Tanková brigáda” (Tank Brigade) used a variety of authentic armored vehicles used by both sides. It includes Russian T-34 and T-34/85s, as well as German Panzer IV Ausf. G, Sturmgeschütz III and a Schwimmwagen.
1950s film ‘Ice Cold In Alex’ starring John Mills not only features Germans using unmodified M3 half tracks in 1940 (before America joined the war) but also Germans using 1950s British Centurions. Furthermore a land rover (first produced 1948) features in the very last scene.
GD POINT and a reasonable film !! PLEASE CHECK OUT "TANK FORCE" 1950's VIC MATURE LEO GENN AND ANTHONY NEWLEY ALF BURKE AND OTHERS !! AN ON SCREEN CREDIT to CARABENIERS R.SCOTS GREYS (APOLOGIES IF IVE CREDITED WRONG REGTS!!) CLEARLY TRNG in LIBYA !! MEGA FOOTAGE of CENTURION MBT COMETS ETC BONAR COLLEANO A USA actor also stars (it took me a couple of viewings LOL...to I.D. HIM ) LEO GENN was a barrister PRE war and RA OFFR ! CHECK OUT "RED BERET " OR "PARATROOPER" with ALAN LADD ( BR. PARAS AS MAIN TROOPS AND EXTRAS) ANYONE KNOW TRNG AREAS WHERE it was Filmed ???!! Cheers guys!
@@thebeast8429 so to be clear, you're saying that Holocaust footage, footage of Jews in concentration camps, shows Jews in concentration camps..... man. Thank god you were here to suss that out.
The soviet ww2 movies made in the same time period had much more authentic vehicles, and they also had to modify some of their tanks to make them look like krautz.
There are some really great Soviet WW2 movies and some not so good ones. Check out this movie even though there are no tanks. It is a legit 10/10 movie and you will cry your eyes out. If anyone watches it, tell me what you thought of it. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dfftHKf164E.html
@@johnjones_1501 if the soviets were using a German tanks it must to happen during the Reichs push to the east when the reds were short on equipment, which also means that most of them would be destroyed in combat.Once the Soviet started counterattacking they would already be deploying their own made tanks plus Western lend & lease vehicles
A lesser known Arnhem film is "Theirs is the Glory", a dramatised documentary filmed *on location, in 1946.* I'm willing to make a small wager that the Tiger tank is the real thing.
What I find inexcusable for thát movie though, is that they destroyed some diesel train sets. Imagine the war is just over. The country is in ruins, a lack of everything. And a few of the remaining (operational!) train sets are sacrificed for a MOVIE.
I loved these war movies as a kid, but I must admit the substitute tanks and half-tracks spoiled a lot of them for me, as did the T6 Texan/Harvard trainers standing in for just about every type of single engine fighter - suspension of disbelief is difficult when you're 14 and you know that's completely wrong. So sad that when hollywood finally got their hands on a real, original, working Tiger I, the movie they produced was complete and utter shite.
@@myopinionbetter4287 yea movie could've been a lot more considering the cast they had, action wise I felt it looked really good with all the tracers and cool effects tho. Hopefully we get to see more of the 131 in future WW2 films as well
At 14 I was able to discern why they used replacements (money, availability) and just enjoyed the films. I knew that functioning Zeros, BF 109's, Tigers, Panthers, etc etc weren't exactly a dime-a-dozen.
@@user-go1sl6rd7u American World War 2 films always fall into the same traps. It's always the 'War is Hell. What the hell are we doing here, sarge?' conversation, the SS showing up like a demonic legion and an obsession with there being a last stand, no matter how illogical such a stand is, with the group of characters we've come to know getting picked off one by one.
@@AndrewAMartin While this actually happened due to the nature of conscription, bringing together men from very different backgrounds, it's really annoying when each man conforms rigidly to a stereotype; the big guy, the psycho, the cold sniper, the medic with his heart on his sleeve, the kid etc.
I came across a fact, something cool. In the productions :"Force 10 From Navarone" (1978) and "The night of the Fox" (1990) we see the T-34/85 because they are Yugoslav / British productions. Not entirely wrong because the Wehrmacht sometimes deployed a captured T-34.
For old Sherman tanks, there is " Tank" with James Garner ,who plays a sergeant major with a personal restored early M4. A very good story to it. There is also " The tanks are coming " , a 1950's story of a tank group operating in Europe near end of WWII. All done with authentic vehicles, still in use in the 1950's, even a Sherman tank recovery version, and an M26 Pershing at the end
The best scene was when the "hooker" fired the Cal .50 machine gun into the woods. Imagine the projectiles coming down like artillery shells in a nearby village ... oh my god 🤣
Tank is the movie which I fell in love with the Sherman. Feel so badass driving the Sherman across the state serving out some justice until it got damaged and stuck in the mud
My fave was the use of T34s for German tanks in "Force 10 from Navarone". The producers had to do something- German iron wasn't lying around in quantity or useability anymore. More modern US tanks were big enough and intimidating painted sand or grey. I guess the producers of Force 10 couldn't afford that, and lord knows old T34s were a dime a dozen as late as the 70s. In that film, the Yugoslav partisans looked more heroic if given no tanks of their own, so what were probably Yugoslav Army T34s were repurposed as panzers. Pre-internet, only vets or the geekiest of geeks [that was me then] could tell or cared, and suspension of disbelief came easier then, at least in movies, if not life.
@@mdlbldr45 Captured tanks in German service were known as Beute Panzers. (A Bergepanther is a recovery tank based on the Panther hull.) Captured tanks were used on occasion by most armies of WW2, though less common by the Western Allies than the Soviets. I have heard of at least two Panthers used by the British, and the French did use a fair number of Panthers both during the war and after. The Soviets did use captured German tanks in quantity, and even converted Panzer III hulls into the SU-76i. Japan used captured M3 light tanks that were captured during the Philippines campaign during early 1942.
This is the type of video I live for I work at a military antique store and Museum and I'm always telling the boss about movie inaccuracies i studied film and television for 3 years as well
@@JohnnyJohnsonEsq exactly right shows that you're learning things as well being able to point out things like buttons and vehicles because of your video I went back and watched Kelly's Heroes
Everyone to Spain in the 30's: "Hey guys, can we borrow your war to test out all our tanks?" Everyone to Spain in the 60's: "Hey guys, can we borrow your tanks to shoot all our war movies?"
Most of that movie was not grounded in reality. Pieper's lead panthers, not tigers, were stopped west of Stoumont on a curve. Like 4-5 panthers were knocked out in less than 1000 yards. Piper figured right then to go back to la Glaze. There's a marker there and description as the longest point reached in the battle. Fuel also was a issue. No tigers were burnt by tons of gas rolling down on them! More tank crews survived than did not. Pure BS.
I just watched the movie A Bridge Too Far for probably the 30th time. Always nice to see the Leopard 1's of our glorious Dutch army crossing the Arnhem bridge, shooting at the British paratroopers!
There are numberous Chinese civil war movies where Type 62 tanks were used to convert themselves into M26 Pershing tanks. They are actually pretty decent mockups.
Even as a 8 years old kid i could tell those Patton tanks looked quite odd in that movie. When i watched all those movies as a kid i didnt noticed any but the Pattons. I think the Patton is such an iconic american tank you cant mistake it for a WWII tank at all...
To be honest, German or Italian tanks of WW2 were almost impossible to find in running order already in the 50s, the French army used Panthers for a brief period after the war and some Panzer IV went to Siria, but as a general thing almost all were simply scrapped in the 40s apart from a small number "saved" as museum pieces. The good attempt in "Kelly's heroes" and the much less good attempt in "A bridge too far" are exceptions, the M47 was plentiful in Europe, as well as the M24, and an attempt to alter the appearance of the Patton to make it more "square" probably would have been as bad as the Leopard 1 in "A bridge too far" and too expensive to do in several tanks for mass scenes.
@CipiRipi00 Not to mention that Germany only built less than 20,000 armoured vehicles of all types combined (!) between 1937 and 1945, while the US produced 50,000 Shermans and the Soviets over 40,000 T-34s during WW2 alone. So German tanks had always been rare to begin with.
In the Yugoslav partisan movie "Sutjeska" they used T-34-85 russian medium tanks to play as Tiger I tanks, they used cardboard panels to make the tanks a bit more square looking and that was it. It actually looked convincing, you couldn't tell that they were T-34-85 unless you notice the typical russian 5 wheel configuration on the tanks.
I served on a m-48 52 ton tank, 90mm main ,50 cal. coax, few flame thrower. A beast with 5 per platoon and 9 APC m113 13 ton. Qu-ohan tp pl-Durang 10th calvery RECON. Vietnam.
All of these films were a must watch when I was a kid. Then we would act them out at school the following day. Good days ❤️. Thanks for the trip down memory lane
It was the same for me in school in the early 80s...back then in Italy Video Cassette Recorders were not very common, so basically every household watched the same movie the evening before...
I built Tamiya 1/35 tanks when I was 12 years old so when I watched these movies at that time, I always wondered why they don't use the real tanks. Even with the T-34/Tiger in Kelly's heros, my gut was telling me the wheels are not right, the turret is too forward! But back then I didn't know it was hard to find authentic WWII tanks. :-)
@@douglasstrother6584 haha, back then it was pretty much the only entertainment during the long summer holidays for me. I remember in HK, 2 boxes were very hard to get. M113 fire support and M42 duster. When I finally found them when I went to Australia, it was like finding gold.
Great video. I wrote a book called 'Battles on Screen', which mentions most of the films in the video so I would like to make some corrections.. Tobruk (1966) was filmed in Calfornia and Arizona. None of it was filmed in Spain despite what you may have read on the internet. Eight Sherman tanks (not four) were used in 'a Bridge Too Far'. Two of those were towable hulks ,the rest were in running condition. In addition five glassfibre Sherman Firefly replicas were used ,mounted on Land Rovers. Also used were one M24 hulk , one M47 hulk and one M10 hulk. 'The Bridge at Remagen' was filmed in Czechoslovakia and completed in Italy and Germany following the Russian invasion. However, the film crew were eventually allowed back into Czechoslovakia to film some crucial scenes. The three Tiger replicas used in 'Kelly's Heroes' were built for an earl;ier Yugoslavian film called 'The Battle of Neretva.'
One thing I noticed about early World War II movies no matter what country the movie was made in. It always shows the soldiers as grown men but reality is they were 18, 19, 20, & 21 year olds.
@@JohnnyJohnsonEsq The reason why JW even became a super star was that he was already 35 years old when the US entered WW2, so he could acquire roles that would have gone to younger actors if they hadn't been drafted to join the armed forces. He then was eager to play in as many war movies as possible so he could at least pretend to have been a soldier.
Because all of the tanks in it were actually period tanks. The Tiger I in Fury was an actual Tiger from the Bovington armor museum. The only working real Tiger in existence I believe.
Gotta admit, even the Tiger 1 mockup in Saving Private Ryan had me fooled when I was still a kid, not knowing a whole lot about the minor distinguishing features between tanks
What a great idea for a channel. I absolutely love the history of ww2 behind closed doors, like prelude to war, Munich talks, "sitzkrieg", featuring high level political leaders and everyday people reacting to the onset of war,,trying to prevent it,, escape it, prepare for war.....just love that stuff but there's so little content I've found.. Impossible to search for so I welcome recommendations. Also, French occupation, French resistance and Vichy France are woefully uncovered topics in both documentary & films. Battlefield series and World at war are still the very best ww2 docs ever made imo
@@rolfagten857 Good mentions! Sorry I was just trying to focus on some of the big Hollywood classics in this one. More German films to be covered in the near future. :)
Even as a kid i struggled to watch these films with so many inaccuracies. Id give anything to see these movies redone in the Style of "Band Of Brothers"
Yes, my friend Odball was there when we in "Kelly's Heroes" chased the German army from the Alsace region in northern France. I then received more awards than I deserved. He, He he!🏅🎖🎖
By far my favorite weird tank comes from the Rat Patrol series. Not only do they have M3 halftracks dressed up as German ones, but the German's main "tanks" are M7 priests.
I've seen a film where both the Americans and Germans are using Shermans against eachother in a battle. I saw another where the British were using cromwells in North Africa against the Germans using centurions
There are so many more historical accurate vehicle in A Bridge too far, my favorite childhood movie, including M10s, daimler armor cars, bedford trucks and more.
It’s important to remember that the losing side didn’t have a lot of tanks surviving the war. We, being the victors, had lots of tanks at war’s and. This was a severe constraint on hollywood.
As I kid in the 60s and 70s I was the armoured vehicle version of one of those train spotter dorks , along with my best friend .We knew that the "Tigers " weren't quite right and guessed at a Soviet tank chassis but weren't quite sure which one.Still we loved that movie ! My mate Rueben Connor and I always knew we were going to be soldiers but thought we would be in the New Zealand army .I was in the NZ army reserve [ Territorials "Terries "] before eventually becoming a digger in The Australian regular army and Rueben in the NZ army .We both served faithfully and honourably right up to my retirement and my mates death . Sorry for going off piste but Rueben was a brave and decent man who deserves to be remembered .
Let's not forget the tv war series on tv in the 1960s through to the 90s. Combat, 12 o clock high, the rat patrol, even the nam series china beach and tour of duty had some things in them from the wrong era as well. For the most part in the mid to late 60s. Opel blitz trucks, kubelwagens and other german support equipment was used. German half tracks and tanks were extremely hard to come by for movies and tv series back then. Most having been scrapped for the metal for after the war peace time projects. It's amazing to look into just what happened to so much war materials after the war. Good example is the bi planes of World War I that were trashed or used in movies and barnstorming air shows only to see them crashed or in worse.
The village where kellys heroes tiger scene was filmed is host of a yearly airsoft re-enactment event named after the movie, entire village is the playground. The Leopard 1 in a bridge too far was meant to resemble a Tiger II due to a real Tiger II crossing the bridge like in the movie and gave the british a hard time before driving along.
I love this type of content. When I was a kid we used to play army a lot. I had a Mattel Thompson machine gun that you could pull back a lever and then when you squeezed the trigger it'd make a rat a tat tat sound.
