’Battle of Britain’ Film Collectables
In the first of a new regular series looking at military-related collectables, Peter Arnold examines the popular field of collecting material associated with the epic 1969 film ‘Battle of Britain’.
Fifty years ago the first rumblings of a film about the Battle of Britain started to surface in the aviation enthusiast community and by the end of 1967, after an on-off period of financial backing, aircraft earmarked for the film accumulated at RAF Henlow, the engineering base for the film. Then, through the very wet spring and summer of 1968, the aircraft, principally static and taxiing Spitfires, departed for Duxford, the major base for filming. Clearly, these aircraft became a magnet for photographers – both official and otherwise. Many images tended to be on colour slides and there wasn’t too much one could do with a slide in 1968 short of projecting it. Who would have thought that, years later, technology, the Cibachrome process, home scanning, image manipulation and printing could produce such great images from a 1960s slide?
So, photographic images from the film are great collectables and, arguably, one of the main focuses for collectors today. They break down i…
