For those of you who like to see Landships move, the Imperial War Museum shop is still selling the Battles of the Somme on Ancre on VHS PAL. These are original silent WW1 documentaries, the Battle of the Ancre includes the earliest film of British tanks among lots of other material. Sadly they aren't (quite) action shots, the camera man set up to film them going into action was so amazed he forgot to take any film!
The direct link to the online shop is ridiculously long, so I won't post it, it's not too hard to find.
I can also recommend it! Very good. Not just the short snippets you are used to seeing on TV, but some really looong shots, were you get a good sense of their bulk and slowness. Comes with a very good booklet too.
To clarify - the footage of British tanks in the film Battle of the Ancre is great, but was taken behind the lines and not during actual combat. Well worth the price of admission.
The video is in PAL format while US video is usually NTSC and I don't think they are compatible.
Many thx for taking the time to clarify, that helped And from your discription it does seem worth the price, but, "... The video is in PAL format while US video is usually NTSC and I don't think they are compatible...."
While I was looking around the net to see what the difference between PAL and NTSC was, I found that video can be transferred between formats. Costs of course