N/A Rat Patrol on DVD!

That's terrific!!!!! It is a historical fact that eight men and two Willy's Jeeps each with a mounted M2 machine gun nearly crippled the German Afrika Corps. Now if they would just release "Hogan's Heroes" depicting the clandestine activities of POW's poorly guarded by the Luftwaffe. The railyards at "Hammelburg" never saw it coming! :D
 
I loved 12 O Clock High. And Combat! (For a long stretch of time back in the 70s, Combat! was the only show that made babysitting tolerable on Saturday afternoons. Gah.)

I liked Hogan's Heroes, too. It would be good to get them all on DVD, since I do not own a TV (by choice) but like watching movies and such on my computer.

I probably would have a TV if they brought back good shows like those and not the crap that is on today.

terry
 
We used to run the border trace between East and West Germany with gun jeeps a la Rat Patrol. Then along came the M-1 Abrams and shortly after, the M-3 Bradley. The gun jeeps (M151A2's) went away and not too long after, so did the border. As you can imagine, there was quite a bit of "Rat Patrolling" around Fulda, Bad Hersfeld and Bad Kissigen. The last time I was in Germany, Hogan's Heroes was just coming on the air with German subtitles. It was a huge hit. I don't think 12 O'Clock High would have been as welcomed "mit Deutche Gemutlichkeit."
 
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Fast n' Furious said:
That's terrific!!!!! It is a historical fact that eight men and two Willy's Jeeps each with a mounted M2 machine gun nearly crippled the German Afrika Corps. Now if they would just release "Hogan's Heroes" depicting the clandestine activities of POW's poorly guarded by the Luftwaffe. The railyards at "Hammelburg" never saw it coming! :D
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Google Earth to 50 degrees, 7 minutes, 50 seconds N, 9 degrees, 52 minutes, 47 seconds E. There IS a Hammelburg, Germany. Now, Stalag 13, I don't know about that. :D
 
Fast n' Furious said:
We used to run the border trace between East and West Germany with gun jeeps a la Rat Patrol. Then along came the M-1 Abrams and shortly after, the M-3 Bradley. The gun jeeps (M151A2's) went away and not too long after, so did the border. As you can imagine, there was quite a bit of "Rat Patrolling" around Fulda, Bad Hersfeld and Bad Kissigen. The last time I was in Germany, Hogan's Heroes was just coming on the air with German subtitles. It was a huge hit. I don't think 12 O'Clock High would have been as welcomed "mit Deutche Gemutlichkeit."
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Sorry for the thread hijack (no I'm not - I haven't hijacked a thread all day...) :dunno:

John, my brother in law was in Bad Kissingen in the early '80s as a tank commander...another "small world" phenom...
 
Cool! I never got to watch this show but heard of it. Now my curiosity can be satisfied. (Can you believe I was made to watch Mickey Mouse Club instead! Arrgh! And I thought Spin and Marty was about airplanes and was really disappointed it wasn't. It was tough being outvoted on what to watch by six other siblings.)

Anyway, I'll have to check that out on a blizzardy blowy day (why....there are 50 mph wind gusts and snowflakes coming down right now!) Thanks for the link! I've got it bookmarked.

:)

terry
 
gkainz said:
Sorry for the thread hijack (no I'm not - I haven't hijacked a thread all day...) :dunno:

John, my brother in law was in Bad Kissingen in the early '80s as a tank commander...another "small world" phenom...
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Well the only folks at BK was the 1/30 Armor which belonged to the 3rd ID and 2nd Squardon of the 11ACR. Do you remember which he was in cause that's when I was there.

Allons!
 
Fast n' Furious said:
Well the only folks at BK was the 1/30 Armor which belonged to the 3rd ID and 2nd Squardon of the 11ACR. Do you remember which he was in cause that's when I was there.

Allons!
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Leave it to a sailor to screw up army stuff ... here's the reply from my sister in response to the related info I forwarded her from the thread above...
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oh my, you called him a "tank commander" now you are in BIG trouble! :)

let me see if I can get this right ... I always used to mess it up, and now time and memory leaks will make it worse.

He was an infantry company commander in Schweinfurt, actually - B Co. 2nd Batallion, 3rd Infantry Div.

But we chose to live in a village that was closer to Bad Kissingen(BK) than to Schweinfurt, and spent a lot of our free time there. Beautiful little town.

His unit drove BRADLEYS (which I was informed are NOT tanks, I made that mistake once and got such a funny reaction that I naturally did it repeatedly on purpose after that.) His infantry guys also did border patrols along the Fulda gap.

He's right about the units in BK being cav and armor. I recognize the "horse" crest in the thread. Brings backs great memories.
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Fast n' Furious said:
The last time I was in Germany, Hogan's Heroes was just coming on the air with German subtitles. It was a huge hit. I don't think 12 O'Clock High would have been as welcomed "mit Deutche Gemutlichkeit."
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The last time I was in Germany, 1997, I saw Hogan's Heroes on TV and the dubbed in German. Both the Germans and Americans spoke German. Weirdest thing I ever saw. Suprisingly, to me anyway, was that it ws even on in Germany and popular.

Yeah, I don't think Twelve O'Clock High would be very popular. Who would want to see their country bombed on every episode.

terzap said:
The Rat Patrol!
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Terry. I can't believe a woman likes Rat Patrol. My wife HATES it, especially the scenes with all the machine gunning, which are the best IMHO. I bought a bootleg DVD set off of Ebay some time ago. The Rat Patrol was one of my favorites TV shows when I was a kid. A friend of mine had a Rat Patrol lunch box and board game, which, of course I always wanted, but never got. :)

Can you imagine a contemporary version set in Iraq? It'll never happen as our society, has become to PC and we can't have the Americans being the good guys, now can we.
 
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A few years ago one of the cable channels ran Rat Patrol and Ba Ba Black Sheep re-runs back 2 back, I was a couch potato that day.:yes:
 
Anthony said:
....Terry. I can't believe a woman likes Rat Patrol. .... The Rat Patrol was one of my favorites TV shows when I was a kid. A friend of mine had a Rat Patrol lunch box and board game, which, of course I always wanted, but never got. :)
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My dad raised me proper, he did. :) Since he was a WWII vet (and served during Korea and a few of the early years of Viet Nam), he got me into all those shows PLUS sat there and went over historical accuracy and whatnot and mentioned this and that friend and relative who was in other branches or outfits and related their stories. I loved it. Unfortunately, he died when I was 11, and I tried to continue appreciating those things on my own time.

I don't think we can make shows like that nowadays. Because there was a lot more to them than shooting up the enemy. Black Sheep was good (I mean, it had F4-U CORSAIRS...I watched it because I was in love with the airplanes and couldn't give a rat's behind who else was in it) but even so, it didn't have some of the deeper storylines a lot of the older shows did.

And it is interesting that both John Banner and Werner Klemperer of Hogan's Heroes were Jewish. I read that somewhere. One of them, I think, was in or nearly put into a concentration camp. That show had a lot of heart beneath the humor.

I can't wait to start DVD hunting. BTW, has anyone reading this thread seen the British show about the guys who flew Spitfires? I'll have to look up the name. I rented it from Netflix a few years ago.

terry

(And for the record, I thought Moffat in Rat Patrol was pretty hot, too. And Dietrich. But I never thought about THAT until I watched it later on when it would have midnight reruns and I was in college.)
 
I think what was amazing about Hogan's Heroes was the fact that the show was aired only twenty years AFTER the end of WWII. Who would have thought that a show that took place in a German POW camp would ever get on the air without some form of backlash. Today, I don't think you could hope to pull that off.
I have some really great gun jeep memories. Heading down the autobahn with my driver Mike Locasanno of Queens, NY in a snow storm. Sitting at our border firing position watching a Hind D attack chopper crash about ten feet from the wire. Doing first aid on an German man injured in a car crash in the dead of Winter at night.
What got me about Rat Patrol was the opening scene...the music...the jeeps coming over the dune....pure Hollywood.
My last unit had the last gun jeep in the inventory before going to the armed HMMMV. It was light enough to load on the ramp of the C-130 and despite being an old POS was the best ride in the company. Wonder where it is now?
TERZAP, you're not thinking of the show "Piece of Cake" are you.
 
How about The High and The Mighty, it is finally out on DVD. Also Island in the Sky. Both are Ernie Gann stories. I think they both have John Wayne in them. Good stuff!
 
Bob Bement said:
How about The High and The Mighty, it is finally out on DVD. Also Island in the Sky. Both are Ernie Gann stories. I think they both have John Wayne in them. Good stuff!
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I loved Island in the Sky and am loathe to return it to the video store. I watched it three times including the commentary and all the great features. The High and the Mighty had good flying/cockpit scenes but the other stuff was a little too...I dunno, melodramatic. I started a thread about the John Wayne DVDs on Sunday I think. :) Great minds here--thinking alike!

Now I have to get those Ernest K Gann books from the library.

And I agree about the Rat Patrol opening, with the theme song and the Jeeps flying over the dunes. Arrggh! Can't wait until January.

terry
 
Fast n' Furious said:
What got me about Rat Patrol was the opening scene...the music...the jeeps coming over the dune....pure Hollywood.

TERZAP, you're not thinking of the show "Piece of Cake" are you.
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Yep, the opening sequence sold the show. It was done by two of the actors in the series, Justin Tarr (Tully) and Christopher George (Sgt. Troy). Yep, they actually did the stunt themselves. They used the same shot for both jeeps comong over the dune. The music is fantastic.

"Piece of Cake" is the British mini-series about the Spits. I read the book and saw the series on PBS. I'm sure its on DVD.
 
terzap said:
...Black Sheep was good (I mean, it had F4-U CORSAIRS...I watched it because I was in love with the airplanes...
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I loved Black Sheep for the Corsairs, too. When I as around 10 or so, I sold seeds to all my relatives and friends' parents so I could earn the tether-line cox powered F4-U Corsair plane ... man, I loved that plane!
 
Fast n' Furious said:
TERZAP, you're not thinking of the show "Piece of Cake" are you.
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Yes--thank you--that was the name. (OF course I remember what sort of airplanes they flew, and not the bloody name of the show. LOL!!)

terry
 
terzap said:
I liked Hogan's Heroes, too. It would be good to get them all on DVD, since I do not own a TV (by choice) but like watching movies and such on my computer.
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My dad, who fought in WW2 loved Hogan's Heroes (I did too). But once while at my neighbors house we were watching it and his dad came in and chewed us out royally for watching it. He was screaming that Nazis were not funny and so forth. Seems that when he was a boy he was in a Nazi concentration camp during the war. I think I can understand his feelings.
 
"Rat Patrol" & "Combat"...two of my favorites...used to paly combat as a kid...all the kids on the block had toy Thompson submachine guns of course (none of which had orange tips either).

Later in life I owned a Jeep CJ7 that was great fun to drive in rat patrol mode (appropriate beach areas and fire roads of course), it was the CB era so the vehicle did have a long whip antenna but no .50 cal's on the back though.

"Black Sheep Squadron"...another favorite...a few years ago on a cable station ran the series...David & Matthew (now 9 & 8) wrote to the cable company when they stopped running the show.

What was the name of the WWII movie where a small group of allies are pinned down in the desert by a small group of Germans...both are running out of water...the allies have a jeep they make sound like a tank...I think Frank Sinatra is in the move (but I could be wrong on that)...speaking of Sinatra...I always like "Von Ryan's Express"..."Kelly's Heros" with Clint is another good one (saw that at a drive in with my family as a kid).

Len
 
Len Lanetti said:
"Rat Patrol" & "Combat"...two of my favorites...used to paly combat as a kid...all the kids on the block had toy Thompson submachine guns of course (none of which had orange tips either).

What was the name of the WWII movie where a small group of allies are pinned down in the desert by a small group of Germans...both are running out of water...the allies have a jeep they make sound like a tank...I think Frank Sinatra is in the move (but I could be wrong on that)...speaking of Sinatra...I always like "Von Ryan's Express"..."Kelly's Heros" with Clint is another good one (saw that at a drive in with my family as a kid).
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Yeah Len. One Halloween I was a "soldier" with my toy Thompson. Remember, you'd cock the thing then pull the trigger and the spring loaded cocking handle would ratchet forward and make a machine gun noise. I used to carry that thing all over the neighborhood with my buddies. Now Halloween is called the "Fall Festival" and if a kid was wandering the neighborhood with a toy Thompson he'd be arrested with a zero tolerance policy. Can you imagine?

The only movie I know where they make a Jeep sound like a tank is "Hell is for Heroes" with Steve McQueen, Bob Newhart and that guy that played Daniel Boone in the TV series. Several other famous actors in it as well.

"Sahara" with Bogart was a movie in the desert where the Germans had them pinned down, but no water.
 
Len Lanetti said:
Later in life I owned a Jeep CJ7 that was great fun to drive in rat patrol mode (appropriate beach areas and fire roads of course), it was the CB era so the vehicle did have a long whip antenna but no .50 cal's on the back though.
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Ha!

Back in highschool a buddy owned a Jeep CJ, had some fun times. Once, we all went to the ArmyNavy store and bought cammos. Imagine 6 teens dressed in cammos, shades, boots, and bandanas driving around town brandishing BB guns. With the front windshield folded down, of course.

We got pulled over after a while, the cop got a good laugh, relieved us of our BB guns, and told us to drive directly home. "Don't let there be a next time." Then he bust out laughing again.

With the present homeland security mania, they'd probably call out the swat team and then send the poor kids to Levanworth.
 
Anthony said:
What??? Jim Belushi reprising Bogie's role???? :no:

Is it worth watching?
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The review on IMDB says they played it straight & didn't change the story and it worked but I would trust that Bogie is better.

You know kids these days. Can't watch anything in black and white.
 
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