Queensland Australia!!!
Are you sure thats not something Ned Kelly rigged up?[;)]
If you’re modeling the tank from Indiana Jones, whats it matter if it has a historical counterpart? Its a model of the tank in Indiana Jones. Its Hollywood!!! [8D]
IJ gets to fight with two German soldiers in a truck doing 50 mph and a staff car loaded with mp toting nazis (why they just didn’t pull over and beat him stupid or shoot him is beyond me…)[}:)]
The moving going public wanted to see a Harrison Ford beat up nazis and destroy a tank. They got that and were none the wiser.
The Germans weren’t heavily involved in Africa until summer of 1941, and the “AK” wasn’t created until then. All of the IJ movies are set pre-war (1938?).
Speilburg being the director and all, you would think he would know better then to have the Africa Corps in 1938. This is the man who made “Saving Private Ryan” and “Band of Brothers” after all. My dad thinks he just likes makeing films about killing lots of Nazis, since he is Jewish. LOL.
Not only that but George Lucas is a perfectionist with his films you would also think he would have done his research better. But when it is all said and done it is only a fictional film anyway and a great one at that. Don’t forget the guy playing Hitler looked nothing like him.
But the tank wasn’t supposed to be German anyway, was of some made up Arab country, which might have bought some old WWI British tanks and modified them, them selves to suit their needs.
good point monsieur flicfrancais… hey thats got a good ring to it. i dunno maybe its just they found an original opel blitz and bunged it into the movie
sweet obadiah, that pic of the A7V takes me way back to that good old turnbased WW1 strategy game with the hexagons and things… what was it called again?
Speilburg being the director and all, you would think he would know better then to have the Africa Corps in 1938. This is the man who made “Saving Private Ryan” and “Band of Brothers” after all. end of quote
You would think, huh. But when you look at it, there are some historical inacuracies in SPR too. For example, the Germans didn’t deploy one or two Tiger tanks here and there, they were massed together in battalions (or in Panzer Divisions) to have the greatest firepower possible. And to add to that, there were no Tiger battalions in the American sectors in Normandy (at least for the first couple weeks after D-Day). And one thing that drove me nuts when I saw SPR was why do the Tiger tanks never fire their machine guns? They only ever fire the main gun.
I think what makes BoB so good is the fact that Hanks got the WW2 bug from SPR, and that Stephen Ambrose (may he rest in peace) and the actual vetrans had involvement (Winters, etc.).
Finally had a chance to look over my books and such for the ‘pattern’ vehicle for the Jones’ tank. Not German… no MK 7 from Germany. I still say, use the British / US Mk VIII as a pattern, has that ‘late rhomboid’ look to it and is as close as you’ll get to the movie prop.
By the way, Aberdeen once had an A7V, but scrapped it during WWII… it’s time to sob here guys and gals.
I read in a magazine recestly about a tank the Germans were building near the end of WWI which was a copy of the British Mk. VII called the A7V/U and it wasn’t the A7V we all know. It was only a short paragraph but it caught my eye after reading all these messages in here. Not sure if has anythign to do with Indiana Jones but thought it was interesting anyway. Might be something worth exploring more on. It said that it wasn’t finished by the time the war ended.
It mixed elements of the ‘rhomboid’ british tanks but was still based upon the working design of the earlier A7V. The Indiana Jones tank is a different machine, closer to the size and shape of the British MkVIII.
hey gendarmefrancais, there is an instance when a tiger fires it’s mg34 and upham when he runs out from shelter to find ammo, i’ve seen the movie too many times eh? and when did ambrose die? sorry i’m not living on this planet…
I saw that tank! Loved Brisbane… Seriously big, heavy bit of machinery and must have scared the be-jezus out of anyone who came across the business end of it. Especially in them days there wasn´t much in the way of AT munitions.
The planes on the Zeppelin are Tiger Moths… Lovely planes, handled great unluss flown upside down for too long (carbs would run out of go-juice)… Royal Air Force basic trainers during the 30’s, ironically…
Hey guys, little update… I got the Indiana Jones DVD box set from mum & dad, eh, santa and it explains the origins of the tank. Its actually based on various WW1 tanks. I say based because its purposely built for the movie, just like the flying wing in Raiders. It was either George Lucas or Spieplberg who said they wanted a tank in the movie, a WW1 tank. They built 2. A full rolling, steel beast and a light aluminium version that never even touched the ground. This one was used in all the shots where there was fighting on the deck. Obviously you wouldn’t want to fall off under the tracks of a huge steel monster, so this thing was towed behind a camera truck.
Its a very interesting disk of extra’s… Ever so slightly short (makes you want to come back for more…), but never the less…
Whats funnier about the indiana jones tank is that it ran about 10 times the speed of tanks of the vintage it was supposed to represent and sounded like a new Peterbuilt. I have seen it as well in orlando it’s neat but a little far fetched…But thats Hollywood…
I always thought it was patterned after one of the old “Liberty” tanks that the US made just after WWI. Some of those things were still in the training schools just before WWII.
What about the plane?
I read somewhere recently that the Luft46 plane is in fact a British plane/replica.
Can any of you plane afficianados verify/denounce this?
Gotter.[:)]
We have it on VHS tape, and IIRC, the Arab ruler liked the Rolls, his troops had British-esque uniforms and given that most Arab armies were trained by Britain, it stands to reason that the tank was British. It certainly looked it. Also, Indie says outright that the gun on it is a 6-pounder.
