When I was a kid, about seven years old, I remember seeing 633 Squadron at the movies on a Saturday afternoon with my mates.  We spent many an hour using the jungle gym at school as our ‘Mossie’ as we re-enacted our favourite bits of the film.

My best friend was called Ken and his father (also named Ken) was a radar operator in both Night Fighters and Pathfinders during the war and I used to love listening to his reminiscences about serving in the Mosquito. As an aside, our fathers became good friends in retirement and used to belong to a social club that did ‘raids’ on kindred-clubs up and down the country. Ken Senior used to get them lost all the time. Dad said to him one day that he had no idea how the hell he could find his way to Berlin at night with Jerry shooting at him when he couldn’t find a street in Auckland.

Anyway, back to the movie.  I loved it then and it is still up there on my list of top war films. The soaring music of the score by Ron Goodwin over the opening credits is instantly recognizable by any aficionado of war movies.

The movie used a number of real recently decommissioned RAF Mosquito fighter bombers that were mocked up to resemble wartime variants.  As good as CGI is today, knowing that they used real aircraft for many of the scenes adds something to the impact of the film.

The musical score:

For those who have not seen the movie, here is Part 1 (you will find the rest easily enough)

Wargaming with Mosquitos

There are a heap of companies who manufacture models that can be used for table top wargaming. A 633 squadron game would be fun – with the right type of terrain. I have the sneaking suspicion that someone posted a link to a demo game based on the film. Here are a couple of examples of the type of model available.

Airlex

http://www.airalex.com/MOSQUITO.html

Old Glory (True North)

http://www.oldgloryminiatures.com/proddetail.asp?prod=AUK04