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Bits Of Our Aircraft Are Missing | World War II Instructional Film (1940)

Not to be mistaken for the famous "One of our Aircraft is Missing" movie of 1942, "Bits of our Aircraft are Missing" is a short dramatised public information film commissioned by the Royal Air Ministry Chief Inspector of Accidents in 1940. It was in response to the enthusiastic "repurposing" of crashed aircraft components by a civilian population already struggling to cope with the shortages imposed by Nazi Germany's blockade of the North Atlantic. Wrecked aircraft bits were useful. But the Air Ministry wanted to conduct forensic examinations of wrecks to determine what went wrong, where vulnerabilities lay, and how to improve their survivability. Director Darrell Catling and the leading cast of Philip Friend, Patricia Roc and Basil Sydney tell the story of the potential consequences of looting aircraft wrecks. Air accident investigators arrive to examine the wreckage of an RAF "Marlborough" (fictional type) to determine the cause of the crash. But curious locals have already been scouring the site, moving and removing seemingly innocent components. As this takes place, another "Marlborough" pilot returns to his fiancée as his crew take a rare batch of leave. Upon returning to operations, with no fault found in the earlier prang, the pilot and crew take off, only to crash again. After the late discovery of a critical component that had been incorporated into a child's rabbit hutch, the sole survivor of the second accident lies in hospital, "crippled for life by his own countrymen".