World War Two

With Christopher Nolan’s epic new film Dunkirk released today in the UK, it is a perfect time to focus on still rather than moving images which reveal the original picture of the 1940 evacuation.

Not many wartime flags survive to be sold at auction due to their inevitably fragile nature, but those flown by Allied forces during the D-Day landings must have been particularly precious as mementos.

With the heroics of ‘the few’ in the Battle of Britain more or less guaranteeing auction interest, it is easy to overlook the incredible bravery of bomber crews.

Uniforms can be a hard sell at militaria auctions. Medals for example are nice and easy to display, while guns can sit high on the wall or in a cabinet, but what do you do with a full set of battledress unless you happen to be a re-enactor or happen to live in a mansion with lots of room for mannequins?

The Dutch buyer of ‘the most valuable Second World War battle flag ever sold’ has loaned it to the National Military Museum in Soesterberg, the Netherlands.

This DFC medal group of a British Spitfire pilot who survived the war despite crashing and being given up for dead by his colleagues has an estimate of £8000-10,000 in Plymouth Auction Rooms’ November 21 sale.

Nantwich, Cheshire auctioneers Peter Wilson are selling this item, believed to be from the engine of a fighter plan which was steered away from houses in the town into the River Weaver by a heroic American pilot.

A SCULPTURE has been returned to its former home more than 70 years after it was looted during the Blitz from a bombed London church.

ONE of the rarer acts of peace-time bravery saw the crew of the airship R33 awarded the Air Force Medal.They included George Ernest Long, whose medals and associated ephemera came up for auction at Lockdales of Ipswich on March 27.

SOUTH London saleroom Rosebery’s of West Norwood had to be evacuated on Wednesday, March 23 after a client left a Second World War bomb brought in for valuation at the front desk.

WITH the retreat from Dunkirk so much in the news at the moment, Aguttes have a particularly topical offering in their June 18 sale of manuscripts, postcards and historical documents.

A PENCIL and watercolour sketch showing men at work on a celebrated escape tunnel was a major attraction in a log or record compiled in 1943-45 by a Scottish P.O.W. sold by Lyon & Turnbull of Edinburgh for £3200 on January 13.

Bonhams sold their second WWII Spitfire aircraft in the space of seven months last week when businessman Steven Brooks paid £1.58m plus premium for a TR Mark IX specification model at an auction held at the Hendon RAF Museum on April 20. The plane had been estimated to make in the region of £1.5-£2m.

Eleys Auctions in Boston, Lincolnshire have sold by private treaty 43 personal effects of the legendary World War Two double-amputee pilot Douglas Bader.

IT was the first war painting by a Scottish artist to be exhibited in Scotland and was extensively discussed in the Edinburgh and Glasgow newspapers of January 1941.