Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Watchable for the famous DH Mosquito but nothing else to hold it of any merit, sadly. As others have mentioned, poor acting, sixties-style hairdressing rather than a brylcreem-and-bright-red-lipstick timeline, the film is particularly bad and lacking. Also, as mentioned, stealing far too many aerial scenes from the superior '633 Squadron' make this a dim, Sunday afternoon type of low-budget flick. Interesting plot, actually, however maybe badly executed, mention of 'Highball', not quite the normal 'bouncing bomb', but a device developed mainly for the navy, to bounce against enemy warships. The plan is thus, to 'bounce' them into the mouth of a tunnel to destroy a 'V3' rocket facility. Added to this Munroe's (McCallum) quandary of his adopted 'brother' and superior Officer 'Scotty' (David Buck), missing presumed dead, but actually among the POWS, with an amnesiac bump on his head/unaware of whom HE is.The Nazis are going to use Scotty AND the POWs as a 'Human shield', once they have got wind of the coming RAF attack. Complicating things further of course, is the fact Quint is in love now with Scotty's 'alleged' widow. It's all meant to be hush- hush, especially more so, (David Dundas - he of the 'Blue Jeans' song, years ago and featured on a Levi's advert) blabs to everyone about the POWs plight after being told NOT to - leading to a so-called bonus operation with 'Highball' and the assistance of the French Resistance to bomb the POWs compound to free them ONLY when the V3 facility is destroyed FIRST (any Highball bombs 'left over' are only THEN to be allocated to free the prisoners).This has deliberate echoes of the 'Operation Jericho mission' also executed by DH Mosquitoes. Character actor George Layton (he of the famous British 'Doctor'comedy TV series) mentions this was his first film role. Nice to see the pretty Suzanne Neve as Scotty's 'widow', Beth, but not a lot to remember this for, EXCEPT as I've said, its stealing of 633 Squadron's scenes!

This film succeeds in being as poor as "633 Squadron", only that there is no character to be so ridiculous as Chakiris' with his rock'n'roll player hairdo in the latter, nor a sedan from the sixties to appear in the background in that moving love scene. But "Mosquito Squadron" has an intriguing scene, and I profit from this opportunity to ask if someone else also noticed it. When Quint enters the empty room of his deceased pal with his now widow,the camera shows a poster on the wall reading "ASI / NBG ? QBI (in red)/ R.I.P.!". "R. I. P.", of course, stands for "requiescat in pacem", rest in peace. But, all those remaining letters, what do they mean? Does anyone know or have any idea?

At a time when many a star-studded and big-budgeted WWII actioner emerged, this modest effort seemed definitely like second-tier material – offering customary but efficient thrills and decent spectacle, somewhat in the vein of 633 SQUADRON (1964)…with which it shares much of the plot and action footage! In this respect, the film also owes its German secret weapon to OPERATION CROSSBOW (1965) and its bouncing bombs to THE DAM BUSTERS (1955); no wonder, then, that the end result feels awfully contrived (particularly at the climax, when successive to a couple of failed attempts, it has a wounded pilot wilfully crash smack into the warehouse where the rockets are manufactured!). Besides, the narrative tends too often towards romantic/sentimental complications: the relationship between the two leads being obstructed, for one thing, by the hero having been the best friend of the woman’s husband and, later, by the knowledge he shares with her maimed brother that the man had survived an air crash but is being kept prisoner in a château marked for obliteration during an Allied air raid led by the hero himself! The credentials are strictly below-par (the score, typically an asset in this type of flick, attempts to be rousing but succeeds only in being bland) and the casting a mix of TV actors (THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.’s David McCallum – who delivers a brooding performance – and Suzanne Neve from U.F.O.) and colorful character performers (Charles Gray as the pompous yet stern Air Commodore and Vladek Sheybal as the erudite but fishy Nazi officer in charge of the prison/plant fortress). Mind you, while being no great shakes (and probably instantly forgettable), the film proves mildly engaging – to say nothing of eminently watchable – along the way; when all is said and done, there are certainly far worse titles to spend 90 minutes of your life on…

Some other reviewers comment here are that it is not one of the best British films of it's time - well, the director (father of Katey Sagal from Married with Children and 8 Simple Rules... for Dating My Teenage Daughter) was a real American TV series director and that is why this film has the look and feel of an American TV film from the period.This is a very bad movie. It's only saving graces are the presence of some real Mosquito aircraft and some good footage lifted from another slightly earlier film about a Mosquito Squadron - 633 Squadron.633 Squadron is also not one of the best WW2 aircraft films, but it is still far better than this one.For some odd reason "our hero" has a Canada patch on his uniform, although he is supposed to have grown up with his best friend, another pilot, who lives nearby (in Britain). Very odd. I suspect someone else with a more American accent (like Cliff Robertson in 633 Squadron) was supposed to have had the role and David McCallum was a last minute replacement.There is a scene where David McCallum actually crawl out of a wrecked and burning Mosquito - which at first I thought was also a scene lifted from the other Mosquito film. I do hope they didn't also wreck a Mosquito for this film, as they did in the other film. What a waste!The film begins with scenes lifted from Operation Crossbow.Note: There was actually a real, and quite well known, Mosquito raid in 1944 on Amiens prison in France to liberate important French resistance prisoners, where they breached the wall as they did in this film - though not with Barnes-Wallace bombs. This must have inspired this part of the film.