Distant War

In 1954, the BBC produced an outstanding documentary series on aerial warfare from 1935 to 1950, comprising fifteen half hour shows that was aired on the first Monday after Remembrance Sunday.
Taking two years to make, and compiled from nearly 12 million feet of Allied and enemy film footage, there had been little to compare with it in terms of scale, depth and content.
This landmark series represents an important piece of television history and will give every viewer an honest telling of the development of airpower.
Some of the highlights include; amazing footage taken from the nose of a Mosquito during low level attacks, camera's placed on the wings of various aircraft and a dozen other earth grazing operations.
This series will make your hair stand up on end!
Part 7 The Rising Sun
The film shows that in the first two years of the war in Europe our Eastern dominions were safe enough and that this area was the source of the raw materials that were needed to sustain our Commonwealth and wage war against Hitler's Germany. The situation in the Far East in 1941 and the strength of the Japanese; December 1941, the attack on Pearl Harbor and control of the air and sea; the attack on Ceylon, Easter 1942, and the cutting of the Burma road to break Allied communications; the Americans preparing for war; Australia and New Zealand now having to defend themselves instead of taking part in a distant war; the Japanese attack on Midway; the American attack on Guadalcanal. By February 1943 the Americans were beginning to start making landing craft and aimed to throw the Japanese off every island right up to Tokyo.

In 1936, some 2,800 young Americans, together with 50,000 volunteers from 54 countries, offered their lives in defense of the Spanish Republic. What is less known is that 85 African Americans joined that heroic struggle to fight against racism and for the very civil rights denied to them in their own country. This is their story, an untold chapter in the history of both the United States and Spain. The adventures of invisible heroes who answered the call of a distant war to fight for their own freedom.