THE film about a Welshman whose war was spent at a Grantham factory in the 1940s, is on our TV screens tomorrow afternoon.
Talking Pictures TV (freeserve 82) is showing The Foreman Went to France at 15:45
Starring Tommy Trinder, Constance Cummings, Gordon Jackson and Clifford Evans, it based on the real-life wartime exploits of Melbourne Johns, who rescued machinery used to make guns for Spitfires and Hurricanes.
It was an Ealing film made in 1941 with the support of the War Office and the Free French Forces. The script was by J.B.Priestley and reflects both optimism about an eventual victory and the sense that the post war world would have to be different from that of the 1930s.
Melbourne Johns worked in munition factories in England, but is best known for his work at BMARCo in Grantham.
While there in 1940, it became apparent the Hispano Suiza works in France had important Deep Hole Boring Machines that could be of immense value to the Germans.
Johns volunteered to go out on a mission with a team of soldiers to recover the equipment, against his bosses’ wishes, before the Germans could get hold of it.
Once in France, Johns and his soldier mates found both the factory and local village deserted and were able to load the equipment on to a commandeered lorry and drive it back to England, staying just ahead of the German forces.
The Deep Hole Boring Machine was used for drilling the barrels of the Hispano-Suiza HS.404 20mm cannon that armed Spitfires and Hurricane fighters.
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