American filmmakers’ belittling of Britain

SIR – Philip Wiggs correctly highlights the tendency of American filmmakers to belittle Britain’s Armed Forces and those of our Commonwealth allies (“How Masters of the Air gets the RAF wrong”, Letters, February 2).

This also stretches to incorporating American servicemen into incidents in which they never actually took part, such as the Great Escape.

The first US Army Air Force bombing raid over Germany took place on August 17 1942. By that time, bomber crews from the Royal Australian Air Force, Royal Canadian Air Force, Royal New Zealand Air Force, South African Air Force and Royal Air Force had been engaged in bombing operations against Germany and its allies for almost three years.

The USAAF initially refused to listen to advice from Commonwealth senior officers in Bomber Command that daylight raids without effective fighter escort would result in high casualties and limited success – as the Luftwaffe had discovered in the Battle of Britain. Bomber Command’s crews, drawn from all over the Commonwealth, were the real masters of the air.

We need a Commonwealth filmmaker to produce some historically accurate films about the Second World War – and set the record straight.

Wellingborough, Northamptonshire

SIR – It was Hitler who declared war on the United States after Pearl Harbour in 1941, more than two years after the war started – not the reverse. This is despite many American ships being sunk during those years.

When we were fighting the Nazis alone, the US sold us 50 rusty old shipsat a high price, which included giving them most of our South American mining rights. We only finished paying our US war debts in 2006.

There should be no surprise today that benefits are granted to the UK only when they are in the US’S own interest, as exemplified by Hollywood and, more importantly, by President Obama’s comment that we would be sent “to the back of the queue” for a post-brexit trade deal.

Hythe, Kent