Thursday 16 April 2020

Video of Dover UK in World War II - 1942

I downloaded the video from this page on the Internet Archive where I found that the people who donated it had copied my YouTube description of a lower resolution version word for word - cheeky blighters! ( 😀 )

From time to time during this period of Coronavirus lock down, I'll be doing "Then and Now" comparisons between locations shown in the video and how those locations look today.

Anyway:

Original titles: Dover (1942), Dover Front Line, Britain's Front Line Revisited:


A British Ministry of Information Second World War film, released by the Office of War Information, about Dover during 1942.

This version for US consumption is narrated by the American journalist and media figure, Edward R. Murrow.

Features:

Dunkirk Evacuation

Winston Churchill

The Mayor

Dover Town Hall

St Martin's Battery "Look-a-like"

Pencester Gardens.

This World War Two (WWII, WW2) film gives a resume of the Battle of Britain and Dunkirk Evacuation, 'current' Royal Navy training (including commando raids and landing craft operations), British Army Infantry training in the preliminay build-up for D-Day, and the future of the air war.

Interviews with, and contributions from, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force (RAF Fighter Pilot and Bomber Pilot) personnel and a woman from a mixed Anti-Aircraft Battery. A shore battery 'in action'.

Interviews with local residents including the Mayor.

Farming and other rural scenes, general views of Dover. Specific bomb damage to the Grand Hotel and Burlington Hotel. Scene of the Salvation Army playing amid the ruins. Front-line country - "Hell-fire Corner".

Approximately the last third is concerned with the air war (although aerial footage is included throughout) and types of military aeroplanes (bombers and fighters) mentioned include:

German Messerschmitt 109 (ME 109) fighter; Spitfire and Hurricane fighters; Blenheim, Boston, Stirling, Lancaster, Manchester, Wellington, and Halifax bombers.

Abridged versions of this post are also on Facebook and Twitter.

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