It saddens me that people waste opportunities to focus on more important issues about the raids and the remake, by arguing about a dog. Slavery was a holocaust, to sit there and argue for turning back the clock, is frankly bizarre. Language changes through time, get over it.
What is FAR more important is that this film is an opportunity to redress the notion that the B-17 single-handedly won the war. This raid took place before even the first B-17 raids, Bomber Command had been busy for 3 years already. The B-17 was an amazing aeroplane, but could only carry 6000lbs, while the Lancaster could carry 14,000lbs of bombs.
The Lancaster too was able to take incredible punishment, just like the B-17, but unlike the B-17, performed many daring low-level raids such as the Dams, Augsburg raids and eventually carried 22,000 in broad daylight.
Johnny Johnson, the highest-scoring allied pilot of WW2 wrote in his autobiography, that a bricklayer named "Jock" from Glasgow on the 6th of June, over Normandy, took his lancaster down to below 2000 feet and began a fighter-bomber strafing run on German convoys in the roads below. This kind of unofficial low-level bombing is just one of the many exploits of the Lancaster that we never see in the movies. Hopefully this film will redress the B-17/Lancaster argument and perhaps by showing the coastal flak and it's effect on the Lancasters, the movie will show the truth, that the Lancaster flew higher, lower, carried more and took more punishment at times, than it's US counterpart.
The age old argument "Oh well you guys did that at night didn't you, B-17's had to do it in broad daylight too" is only factually correct for about 1 actual year of the war. After mid-1944, when the Luftwaffe were weakened in preparation for D-Day, RAF Bomber Command routinely flew daylight missions with four-engined heavy bombers such as the Lancaster. The USAAF received drop tanks and also Mustang fighters around the same time in 1944 and similarly enjoyed greater protection.
I'm nervous about this remake. Seems strange to revisit an old topic, when there are so many heroic and important deeds still yet to be chronicled by the media.
The real message of this movie, should be about British scientists being far ahead of the Americans in many areas, but our Government failing to manage our resources properly. As a result America took the lead after the war and has maintained it ever since. This is the real shame. Our present Government should go and watch this movie.
I fully agree with MissPrim, tampering is wrong. They don't need to actually say the Dog's name, you could see the Pilots observe the breach and cut to Scampton, where an officer says "codeword received"
