Behind the Scenes | Flying Officer Mervyn Wheatley

On March 22, 1940, a special photo reconnaissance Spitfire of the Royal Air Force, with pilot Mervyn Wheatley, is shot down over Herwen, a village in the Liemers. Flying Officer Mervyn Wheatley is the first British pilot killed, over Dutch territory, even before the Netherlands was involved in WW2. And that's not the only thing. Several aspects make his story special.

The goal of the initiator, amateur researcher and keeper of this story, is to make Mervyn's story more accessible and tell it to a wider audience. One way to do this is by making a documentary.

Filming was and (still is) done in Holland, Germany and, of course, England. We speak with the initiator, a full cousin of the pilot, several experts and even another eyewitness of the air battle.

In the first week of August we left for England with a small crew of cameraman (Lars Fiering), director (Paul Haans) and producer (Sascha Wensveen) together with the initiator.

In addition to some images being beautiful by themselves, it was especially important for our interviews to properly highlight the set. And with the Sigma 24-70mm lens, in alternation with the Sigma 50mm lens, we were able to make the most of the images. The advantages were that it is a bright and fast lens, you can flexibly zoom from 24mm to 70mm, it has excellent focus, with good image stabilization and because of all these factors the image quality becomes high. We were now able to give the images extra nice depth, with the interviewee sitting sharply in the foreground.

The documentary will be broadcast by Omroep Gelderland in March 2023.