George Preddy Gun Camera film

[RAF74_Buzzsaw]

Salute All

There were some questions about guncam films a while back.

Below is a link to a documentary about George Preddy, the USAAF's leading P-51 Ace with 26.83 victories.

It includes quite a number of extracts from his aircraft guncams.

You can see the poor quality of the films, and likely these would have been despatched to the trash bin except for his record and the fact the 8th Air Force publicity team wanted the material for promotional Newsreels.

At the time Preddy was active, the use of gun camera film by the USAAF was at it height.

The primary aim for these films were to confirm or deny aircraft destroyed/damaged claims. And they were certainly useful for that purpose... especially when as was the case with readily identifiable hits... which could be seen clearly with the Armour Piercing Inciendary .50 cal rounds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBNj-2siJMg

[RAF74_Buzzsaw]

And if you have the time to watch it, here is a long interview with Bud Anderson about flying in the 8th Airforce.

Good information about the methodology of Bomber Escort and what the experience was like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmzzuMzOcKM

[1lokos]

You can see the poor quality of the films, and likely these would have been despatched to the trash bin except for his record and the fact the 8th Air Force publicity team wanted the material for promotional Newsreels.


But the bellow sample have good quality, you see including reflections in the shooting plane - my guess is, as the Source are British Pathé, the YT video are take from the movie archive, not the common copy of copy of copy from some 70/80's VHS like the many.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHKj3CZK3WY

In this corner of the world until middle 70's are common the cinema theaters show old documentaries as entertainment before start the scheduled movie (the marking have not discovery this midia space), what include WWII era Newsreel, and the image quality in these are amazing compared with typical YT videos (nothing including the actual HD source recording).

BTW - In Pad documentary in the last part are show the same gun cams from first part (e.g Bf 109 with right gear down) as new kills, as usual in documentaries. :D

Curiosity, we see this images in some YT "WWII B-17 shoot down be Nazi" videos, but are from a 1954 Nike AA missile test:

https://youtu.be/D_tSIlMdZok?t=131

[RAF74_Buzzsaw]

Yes, I am aware of the Pathe site.

Here is the link for those who haven't seen it:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI72xhrMevUl_-GWHTeWuUQ