Title:BRITISH TROOPS PARTICIPATE IN PRE-INVASION EXERCISES FOR ALLIED AIRBORNE FORMATIONS (PART 4) [Allocated Title]
Film Number:A70 11-4
Other titles:
Summary:
Description: I. Men serving with the 10th Battalion Parachute Regiment board a Mack 10-ton lorry. A Para lieutenant watches a motorcycle despatch rider move up to lead the road convoy carrying part of the battalion and its equipment from camp to Down Ampney Aerodrome, Wiltshire (?). On arrival, men disembark from their transport and prepare bombcell equipment containers for an airdrop. These they then load up onto underwing nacelles on No 46 Group RAF Dakotas, four containers to each aircraft. Paratroopers are issued with parachute packs which they then put on. One trooper places a dismantled Sten gun across his chest in between his parachute straps. Two NCOs synchronise watches. Paratroopers don crash helmets and board their Dakota. Filming while in flight eight hundred feet over Gloucestershire, the cameraman observes paratroopers jump from his own aircraft and others flying alongside and their descent onto a drop-zone between Cirencester and Lechlade. Filmed from the ground, the rest of the 10th Paras drop from Dakotas flying in formations of three.
II. Double-decker buses, the occasional saloon car, cyclists and pedestrians are seen in a bomb-damaged square in London (Grosvenor Square?).
Production Details: Directorate of Public Relations, War Office (Production sponsor)
Army Film and Photographic Unit (Production company)
Lewis, C M (Production individual)
Personalities, Units and Organisations: British Army, Div, Airborne, 1 (regiment/service)
British Army, Parachute Regiment, 10th Battalion (regiment/service)
Royal Air Force, Gp 46 (regiment/service)
Keywords: aircraft, United States - transport: Douglas C-47 Dakota & [British] (object name)
weapons, British - smallarm: Sten sub-machine gun (object name)
transport, United States military - truck: Mack 10-ton truck & [British] (object name)
equipment, British military - personal: parachute (object name)
equipment, British military - personal: crash helmet (object name)
equipment, British military - fire control: bombcell equipment container (object name)
GB, England & Down Ampney, Glos <RAF Station> (geography)
Gloucestershire, England, UK (geography)
GB, England & London, W <Grosvenor Square?> (geography)
