Logline:
Just when Allied victory seems assured after D-Day, a veteran Spitfire pilot and his family are
thrust into a desperate fight for survival when the Nazis unleash their terrifying vengeance weapons upon the English homeland.
Screenplay Synopsis:
With D-Day, the greatest invasion in history, now underway across the Channel in Normandy, the British and their Allies dare to imagine the war may soon be over.
But for London and England’s Home Counties, a new nightmare has just begun. An ominous droning fills the skies as Hitler launches the first of his vengeance weapons upon a war-weary nation.
Battle of Britain Spitfire hero SQUADRON LEADER JULIAN COLVILLE (28) joins a multi-national taskforce to combat the menace. Within days, British and American fighter pilots are hunting hundreds of the V1 flying bombs before the missile’s engine cuts, and the one-ton warhead hurtles to earth with tragic consequences.
For Julian it becomes personal. His beloved wife and Forces ‘sweetheart’ singer ANNA (27), daughter EMILY (2) and the Colville family narrowly escape death when two V1s hit their beloved Kent village. Lambden now sits under ‘Doodlebug Alley’ – the path hundreds of the missiles are taking to rain down their death upon London.
For the usually composed Anna, life has taken a terrifying turn. No place is safe now from the random judgment that falls from the skies. Forced also to confront a devastating secret in her own past, Anna finds a way to fight back on all fronts. She joins American ELDON FARROW (64) and his orchestra as their star singer. Backed by Julian’s wealthy parents, Anna and the Farrows embark upon a series of unique ‘defiance’ concerts to boost London’s failing morale.
Meanwhile Julian’s sister, MI-6 officer ELIZABETH COLVILLE (32), is engaged in the intelligence war to defeat Hitler’s V-weapons campaign. She and her Scots colleague LT COL DANIEL CRUIKSHANK (34) know the flying bomb is only the start. The Nazis are within weeks of launching the V2, a ballistic rocket with another one-ton warhead. There are no known measures to counter this weapon. The V2 falls to earth at four times the speed of sound. You don’t even hear it coming.
But there’s a third Nazi V-weapon, perhaps the most frightening of all. Deep within a bomb-proof bunker in northern France, the V3 is nearing completion. It’s a multi-charge, long-range super-cannon with the potential to hit London 95 miles away with 1,000 shells per hour, 24 hours per day, pounding the already battered capital into submission.
While Julian’s taskforce hones its tactics to bring down an increasing number of doodlebugs, the V3 becomes Elizabeth and Daniel’s most pressing mission. They join a Commando team led by MAJOR SAMUEL COLVILLE (29), Elizabeth and Julian’s brother, and parachute into northern France to supervise the destruction of the super-cannon and save London.
The mission goes badly wrong. Elizabeth is captured and handed over to the Gestapo and notorious SS-MAJOR TORSTEN FRANKE (30), commander of the SS battalion which perpetrated France’s most devastating civilian massacre. Distraught, Daniel triggers Elizabeth’s contingency plan, Operation Cry Havoc, not only to wreck the cannons and destroy the remaining V1 launch sites, but also to rescue Elizabeth before she’s executed under Hitler’s infamous Commando order.
But matters go from bad to worse. London has only just come to terms with the V1 onslaught when the first of the V2s hurtles out of the stratosphere, obliterating a Chiswick neighbourhood. As the rockets start falling in increasing numbers, Anna and Emily themselves fall victim. A V2 wrecks Lambden’s vicarage, kills Anna’s father, and Anna and Emily are dug out of the rubble, hurt but alive, by a mortified Julian.
The Colvilles have had enough. As Julian’s Spitfire squadron flies out on Operation Cry Havoc with rocket and bomb-loaded Tempests, Mosquitos, Mustangs and Thunderbolts, London’s Royal Albert Hall fills with 6,000 spirited Londoners for the ultimate Anna Colville ‘Defiance’ event. Britain’s King George VI and Queen Elizabeth put in a surprise appearance to honour the brave people of London as well as Anna, the heroic English rose the Nazis failed to blow up.
As Anna walks out on stage, arm in a sling, face bruised but unbowed, to deliver the performance of her life, 90 miles away in northern France, the 52 aircraft of Cry Havoc thumb off the safeties, peel off into battle flights, and let slip the dogs of total war.
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