Blue Max -WW1 Aviation Film

DieselPowered

Blue Max is on RTE now. Great film with some nice flying history behind it including George Peppard.

Info on Wiki about it.

Location:
"Many of the flying scenes were shot at Weston Aerodrome (EIWT) near Lucan, Ireland, about 10 miles west of Dublin hence the name confusion with Weston-on-the-Green. There is also a restaurant named after the movie at the Aerodrome.The final scene where Stachel meets his fate was filmed at Baldonnel, the Irish Air Corps' main base. The hangars seen in the movie were built for the RAF in 1918.

The Carrickabrack Viaduct in Fermoy, Co.Cork was used for the scenes where Stachel and Von Klugermann flew several times under the railway bridge.

The view from the 19th century railway bridge which spans the River Blackwater is spectacular and it was one of the reasons the producers of The Blue Max chose it as one of the locations for the film".

Skyknight

Trinity, as far as I remember was used as for the Berlin scenes (as far as I remember)......though it has been a while since I have seen it. A surveyer I used to work with remembers remembers seeing the aircraft flying around, during the filming.

DieselPowered

Correct - The Berlin scenes were shot in Dublin. Christchurch Cathedral and Leinster House,which are easily recognisable in the background of many scenes and Trinity College served as the army headquarters where von Klugermann's office is located.


-from Wiki.

pfurey101

I remember walking home from the shops and seeing the dogfight in action - smoke trails and the works.

Poor me, what a fright I got!

Joe 90

Richard Bach flew in it. He gave a fair amount of detail about it in one of his books.
In the mid 80s some, maybe all, of the replicas built for it were stored at Abbeyshrule. Sammy Bruton, RIP, showed a group of us around them explaining some interesting points about their construction.

Nforce

Joe 90 wrote: »

In the mid 80s some, maybe all, of the replicas built for it were stored at Abbeyshrule. Sammy Bruton, RIP, showed a group of us around them explaining some interesting points about their construction.

Yep, He let me have a good root around the replicas too. I believe many of these ending up with a collector in NZ.

shamwari

There was a pub called "The Moy" in upper Dorset Street Dublin, and local legend has it that George Peppard was there during a break in the filming of Blue Max, and all drinks were on him!

cml387

The railway viaduct is still there in Fermoy, you can see it best on your left hand side from the motorway as you cross the Blackwater

DieselPowered

shamwari wrote: »

There was a pub called "The Moy" in upper Dorset Street Dublin, and local legend has it that George Peppard was there during a break in the filming of Blue Max, and all drinks were on him!

Its stories like this that really are a part of history.

Heraldoffreeent

Wern't some of the WWI western front battle scenes filmed in conemara?

DieselPowered

I've answered one of my own questions: Did George Peppard do any of his own flying?

"In The Blue Max (1966). For this role, Peppard earned a private pilot's license and did much of his own stunt flying, although stunt pilot Derek Piggott was at the controls for the famous under-the-bridge scene."

merisi

I was at a very interesting presentation on the filming hosted by the Leixlip Historical Society two years ago. It was given by a gentleman who worked on the film as an extra and he had a facinating slideshow of his own photographs. Also present was legendary Irish special effects supervisor Gerry Johnston, who shared his recollections of the filming.

snaproll

I remember the replicas arriving to Abbeyshrule in the early 80's on container trucks, the planes were re-assembled and Sammy Bruton flew some of them before they were dismantled and shipped of to America . Stampe EI-AVU was also shipped.

DieselPowered

"Both of the Pfalz replicas and one Fokker D.VII now belong to New Zealand film director Peter Jackson's 1914–18 Trust, with the Viv Bellamy-designed Pfalz now being on display at the Omaka Aviation Heritage Centre in New Zealand. All three aircraft are kept in fully airworthy condition."

-Wiki

eagerv

Heraldoffreeent wrote: »

Wern't some of the WWI western front battle scenes filmed in conemara?

Some of the aerial scenes were filmed up on Calary Bog, Co Wicklow, using a field just opposite the Big Sugarloaf car park as an airfield. There was also a village set just south of the field.

I can remember as a very young child watching a mock up biplane being dropped from a crane simulating a crash with all sort of pyrotechnics!

The bombing of the "village" was also interesting as was the flying.

de biz

Is Darby Kennedy still extant?

Nforce

http://rwebs.net/avhistory/bluemax/facbmpln.html

Nforce

de biz wrote: »

Is Darby Kennedy still extant?

Yep, living in Spain now afaik. Well into his 90's now. I remember getting an introductory flight with him back in the 1980's (in a yellow Rallye IIRC).

DieselPowered

Speaking of which..did Darby Kennedy fly in the Blue Max film?

bop1977

DieselPowered wrote: »

Speaking of which..did Darby Kennedy fly in the Blue Max film?

yes he was the aerial stunt co-ordinator.

here is the imbd page:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060177/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm

de biz

Came accross this on RTE.ie archive pages.


Unfortunately its not on the RTE player.


Anybody got a copy or details of the other subjects in the eight part Planespotting series originally aired in 1981?



Documentry was reshown in 2006.






Planespotting “My Own Place – Captain Darby Kennedy”



PLANESPOTTING is a series of restored television programmes on Irish aviation from the RTÉ Archive Unit. The second programme in this eight part series is ‘My Own Place – Captain Darby Kennedy’.
This programme was first broadcast in 1981 as part of the “My Own Place” series – at the time Captain P.W. (Darby) Kennedy was chief instructor at Weston Aerodrome in Leixlip, Co. Kildare.

In it he speaks about his back ground as a pilot; demonstrates some of his flying techniques and brings us through the development of the aerodrome where his involvement was very hands-on.

DieselPowered

A friend tells a good story about flying with Capt. Darby Kennedy about 15 years ago in his old Rallye 100. Both jump in and he is instructed to take off, straight into the busy circuit at Weston, he got his knuckles struck with a ruler for not flying straight and level on downwind, got shouted at on finals for not having his speeds right and was given an earfull for not rounding out right in the flair where Darby had to take over, add power, go around and same again.

After about 40 minutes of this and my friend in a bit of a sweat they finally land and taxi back in to park where they have a post flight briefing:

Captain: "My dear fellow, your circuit work needs a hell of a lot of work"
Friend: "Captain, I didn't think it was too bad for my first Introductory flight"
Captain: "Ooh, in that case well done, I thought you were somebody else"

Klunk001

DieselPowered wrote: »

A friend tells a good story about flying with Capt. Darby Kennedy about 15 years ago in his old Rallye 100. Both jump in and he is instructed to take off, straight into the busy circuit at Weston, he got his knuckles struck with a ruler for not flying straight and level on downwind, got shouted at on finals for not having his speeds right and was given an earfull for not rounding out right in the flair where Darby had to take over, add power, go around and same again.

After about 40 minutes of this and my friend in a bit of a sweat they finally land and taxi back in to park where they have a post flight briefing:

Captain: "My dear fellow, your circuit work needs a hell of a lot of work"
Friend: "Captain, I didn't think it was too bad for my first Introductory flight"
Captain: "Ooh, in that case well done, I thought you were somebody else.

Fantastic. I remember him flying circuits in a rallye with an assortment of dogs in the aircraft. I think one was a German shepard, the other some sort of terrier.