Target for Tonight

The first wartime documentary to take an offensive rather than a defensive war attitude was Harry Watt's Target for Tonight, it told the story of the crew of F for Freddie, a Wellington bomber, and the routine of a raid on Germany. Psychologically it was well timed, appearing in the latter half of 1941 after the blitz, after the German invasion of Russia and at a time when the war was in a weary stage as far as Britain was concerned. It was shown as a first feature in cinemas not only in Britain but in 12,000 cinemas in the Americas, and was seen there by 50 million people. Its propaganda effect was incalculable, not only for morale-boosting at home but for showing the world that there was no question of Britain being finished.

It had been made simply and cheaply, with many sequences mocked up in the fuselage of an obsolete and un-airworthy aircraft at the edge of an RAF airfield. An effect of Target for Tonight was the sudden interest awakened by feature producers in the power of documentary. J. Arthur Rank, now the tsar of British film production as the Maxwell studios had been requisitioned, approved the recruitment of documentary directors for the production of entertainment features, thus enabling the film industry to benefit from the experience of a body of men who had been able to create films without the customary limitations of the market place to worry about. Ealing Studios, particularly, benefited from the documentary tradition.