Dunkirk

It is interesting that the air battle scenes in "A Yank in the RAF" are explicitly set around the Dunkirk evacuation, in May-June 1940.

At the time, the RAF came in for a lot of criticism from members of the BEF (that's British Expeditionary Force) for not being effective in countering the Luftwaffe, who inflicted a great deal of damage on the retreating army. Whether or not this criticism was justifiable is a matter for military historians, and for the purposes of considering this film it is neither here nor there, except to note that military historians on both sides of the debate cite the fact that cloudy conditions meant much of the air battle was not visible from the ground.

It isn't so gloomy in the film that the Tommies don't get to see Tyrone Power's flying skillz.

Readers of Ian McEwan's remarkable novel, "Atonement" will certainly remember the scenes set at Dunkirk where members of the BEF attempt actually to lynch an RAF officer, such is their anger at the RAF's ineffectiveness. In interviews McEwan has said he took this scene directly from it being reported to him by his father, who was one of the soldiers being evacuatated.

Of course, after the fall of France, the next major campaign in the second world war was what has come to be known as The Battle of Britain, and the gallantry of the RAF in that battle (roughly July-October 1940) is well known.

In view of this I find it a little peculiar that the filmmakers decided to focus on Dunkirk. I suppose it was because they had access to some of the doumentary footage of the evactuation and wanted to use this; and indeed, these scenes are extraordinary, for a modern viewer. Or, just maybe, the script was finalised in late June, early July 1940, and the Producer and Director just saw no reason to update anything. But this seems unlikely.

I am not saying the decision to focus on Dunkirk was necessarily wrong, but it was an odd choice of focus, for a flag-waver.

Incidentally there were a handful of Yanks in the RAF, although not nearly so many as there were Poles (see "To Be or Not to Be"), Canadians, New Zealanders, Australians and South Africans. Of the 7 Americans who were noted to have flown in the Battle of Britain it seems only one survived the war.