Target for Tonight (1941)
Directed by Harry Watt

Original movie poster for Target for Tonight from 1941
Click for an enlargement

Harry Watt's film was made at RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk during 1941 by the Crown Film Unit featuring Wellingtons and crews of 149 Sqn. RAF Mildenhall is currently host to the USAF & the second largest US Air base in the British Isles, the largest being RAF Lakenheath also in Suffolk.

The first wartime documentary to take an offensive rather than a defensive war attitude was Harry Watt's Target for Tonight, it told the story of the crew of F for Freddie, a Wellington bomber, and the routine of a raid on Germany. Psychologically it was well timed, appearing in the latter half of 1941 after the blitz, after the German invasion of Russia and at a time when the war was in a weary stage as far as Britain was concerned. It was shown as a first feature in cinemas not only in Britain but in 12,000 cinemas in the Americas, and was seen there by 50 million people. Its propaganda effect was incalculable, not only for morale-boosting at home but for showing the world that there was no question of Britain being finished.

It had been made simply and cheaply, with many sequences mocked up in the fuselage of an obsolete and un-airworthy aircraft at the edge of an RAF airfield. An effect of Target for Tonight was the sudden interest awakened by feature producers in the power of documentary. J. Arthur Rank, now the tsar of British film production as the Maxwell studios had been requisitioned, approved the recruitment of documentary directors for the production of entertainment features, thus enabling the film industry to benefit from the experience of a body of men who had been able to create films without the customary limitations of the market place to worry about. Ealing Studios, particularly, benefited from the documentary tradition.

One of the better war time documentary dramas about 45 minutes short but good, this film takes the viewer through the phases of a bombing mission, starting with the recon photos being dropped by a light bomber in the morning, retrieved by an officer at the base, developed and examined and then the mission being planned by the squadron operations officers.

From there the strategy is laid out: F for Freddy will go in first and hit the target (an oil refinery) with incendiary bombs, the others will follow in a stream about 15 minutes apart and target the fire at the refinery and hopefully destroy the surrounding structures.

The focus of the movie now turns to F for Freddy. The Wellington bomber launches, follows its designed path, hits the target and is itself hit by anti-aircraft fire. The other bombers encounter bad weather and have to turn back, while F for Freddy struggles to get home on a bad engine and with a wounded radio operator. Reaching the base, the crippled bomber finds the airstrip socked in with thick fog, so they land blind, with only oil-burning lamps to mark the runway.

The real heroes of the film are the RAF aircrew who do a pretty good job of acting (though you can tell the boys are real cut-ups and hamming it up a bit for the camera). Aviation enthusiasts and WW2 buffs will enjoy seeing the old Wellingtons flying around. Military historians will appreciate the details that go in to planning the bombing strike, right down to the fake attacks by aircraft over the Channel, designed to keep the Luftwaffe from intercepting the real strike over Germany.

One thing that always comes to mind when I view "Target for Tonight" is: These guys had balls! Whereas American raids were high altitude daylight missions, RAF missions were low altitude night attacks, which made bombing particularly difficult and the planes vulnerable to ground fire. Indeed, special lead bombers were sent ahead with incendiary bombs to set the area around the target on fire so the lead bombers could actually see their target at night.

This film was made using actual service men and women of the Royal Air Force, as a wartime morale-booster. When viewed over sixty years later, it is still utterly fascinating to watch the planning and execution of the raid over Germany, and in particular follow the progress of F for Freddie and her crew. For once we can be sure that this is how it was done, it has the sense of realism that most dramas lack.

"Target for Tonight" won a special Academy Award: Best short documentary film of 1941.

Worth a look if you can find a copy of the film. I found mine through http://www.reel.com when I was living in the States in NTSC format. Now I'm back in England fortunately I have a video recorder capable of playing videos in both PAL & the American NTSC format. Reel.com no longer have this title but for those of us in Britain & Europe it can be ordered from http://www.amazon.co.uk/ on DVD for about £15.00. For those of you across the pond you can get it from http://www.amazon.com/. Be careful as there is another film out there with the same title about the first thousand bomber raid by the RAF in World War II. Make sure its the one directed by Harry Watt.

This extraordinary docu-drama which runs for about 45 minutes depicting bombing raids in the early part of the Second World War before the advent of the bomber stream & when night-time cross country navigation was a very hit & miss affair can be seen in its entirety albeit broken up in 5 parts at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iIJJUSz4k8.

Target for Tonight Trivia :

• During World War II, the Ministry of Information in Britain took over the GPO Film Unit, and re-named it the Crown Film Unit. They made larger-scale documentaries and feature-length films, the latter being of the dramatised type with servicemen and women playing themselves. "Target for Tonight" (Harry Watt, 1941) was one of the first commercially-successful documentaries. It illustrated processes, in this case how an RAF night-time bombing raid over Germany was actually carried out. Every person seen in the picture is a member of the Royal Air Force from Commander-in-Chief to aircraft hand, re-enacting his own daily life on the job.

• Target for Tonight won a special Academy Award for best short documentary film of 1941.

• The film featured an RAF Wellington bomber attacking an oil storage depot in Freihausen Germany.

• The film was shot at RAF Mildenhall in 1941 with Wellington Mk.Ic, (from 149 Squadron) and Avro Ansons, and a Wellington fuselage in the studio. Filming also took place at High Wycombe in the real Bomber Command headquarters.

• Group Capt P C Pickard, who appears in the film, later died in the famed Mosquito attack on Amiens prison in France on 18th February 1944.

• In the Cinematheque Belgique Survey of 1952, director Elia Kazan listed Target for Tonight in his top ten favourite films.

• Although the film was about a bomber squadron flying Wellingtons the aircraft shown on the movie poster are actually Boulton Paul Defiant fighters.

• The film was edited by Stewart McAllister. Alfred Hitchcock - U.S. version (uncredited).
  

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