Thanks for the posting! I haven't seen this show in 40 years. It was a real favorite as a kid and I actually had a toy Rat Patrol jeep with posable figures and equipment. Anybody else have one?
This IS from the pilot episode, which had a slightly different closing title and end theme..."Hans Gudegast", of course, later changed his name to Eric Braeden, and became a major soap-opera player on "THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS" for years...
I met Larry Casey a couple times over the years in relation to the business he's in now. He said the one thing he kept from the show was...the rebel hat. A very nice guy with strong presence.
I wish the clip was longer so I could hear more of his music...however, I read that he only recorded about 2 hrs. worth of music for this show & that the editors 'tracked' it for the various episodes....
fivefour. I loved Larry Casey and the series Rat Patrol. Another favorite of mine was Lee Marvin in "Lawbreaker". For example: You Tube Law Breakers HPD Hartford June 1, 1964 Part 1 of 3 These were the great times in TV.
I didn't get one but remember the toy and show, was ten then. Loved all the WW2 shows like Combat. This theme is great, expect that from Frontiere. Yeah, that's the guy from ze soap. Next time he remember to put armored vehicles at the rear of convoy. Was I the only one to notice the camera helicopter in background?
Theme by Dominick Frontiere. He later married the widow of Rams owner Carroll Rosenbloom after he was murdered because of an affiliation with gamblers. Later he and wife Georgia were nabbed in a ticket scalping scandal. The Rams were moved to St Louis, Georgia's home town where they won the Super Bowl under Dick Vermiel but they ended up back in LA under new ownership that is, I imagine, slightly less corrupt. Good times.
Never missed an episode when I was a kid, even though I knew what all the vehicles and weapons were, and that .50 cal won't take out tanks and half tracks. HOWEVER, I had the model kit (2 very tiny jeeps w/50s, a Panther and a mk-4 panzer in 1/72), AND........I had the lunch box. The rest of you may look in awe upon me. Thank you.
One of the coolest TV themes ever. I love the full (ending) version! Towards the end of the unedited version, the gunner with the helmet is hit, thereby opening the door for Gary Raymond (Sgt. Moffitt) to join the squad. Since US troops fought in North Africa only from November 1942 to May 1943 (and then only in the western desert), they did well to get two seasons' worth of episodes!
The "German" equipment was American M-5 or M-16 Half-tracks and the self propelled guns were mobile howitzers, M-7 105 mm "Priests". Painted and doctored up with German markings.
every battle scene had those 2 M7s masquerading as Tigers, and they could never hit anything. Real 105mm explosions that close would've flipped those jeeps on their heads. Still it looks jolly good fun to shoot up a convoy like that!
Lawrence Casey as Cpl. Mark Hitchcock is actually a real life composite of five very gutsy young Ivy Leaguers who dropped out to join The British Army early on before any other American's took on The Wearmacht in case anyone's curious !
He was “the perfect fighting animal,” a man extolled in his own time as a military genius, even by his enemies. Of unquestionable courage and drive, of military dash and elan, he lived by his belief in the importance of direct command, of continuous movement and maneuver, of boldness to the point of rashness. Such was Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, whom history and awed opponents mythologized as the “Desert Fox.”
@GOOSEYGOOSE9 UA was very tight with the Mirisch Brothers up until the '70s. Then UA was bought by the Transamerica Corporation, a conglomerate (shudder!), and went belly-up after the "Heaven's Gate" fiasco. At that point, they were sold to MGM and the logos afterward all said "MGM/UA." If you'd like to learn more about the whole sordid story, read "Final Cut" by the late Steven Bach. I don't know if it's still in print, but you can probably find a second-hand copy of it somewhere.
AND FURTHERMORE: the Germans didn't have the technology to build tanks that could fire while moving, that was the weakness of even the King Tiger tank. This is why they lost at Kursk and at El Alamein. Plus if a group of Kraut soldiers wanted to move, they had to call all the way up the chain of command to Berlin for permission to do so.
@@nicholausbuthmann1421 although by the 1960s very few German tanks were left though consider the US Army lost equipment at Kasserine and Rommel needed every captured item to replace his losses which easily explains some yet the 1950s era Patton tanks
People who post critical thoughts about Rat Patrol's authenticity are like someone posting that Buck Rogers ray gun couldn't go through Martian steel, and being serious about it! It's a freaking fictional TV adventure show, it's not based on any facts or claim that it is! Think outside the box dude, you'll enjoy stuff like this a lot more!
Yes, in the 1st season you sometimes see an M47 Patton tank painted as a panzer, other times as U.S. In the 2nd season, they used an M8 Greyhound armored car a lot but a couple of episodes had an M4 Sherman as a panzer.
Actually, the hood treatment on the GMC halftracks to make them look like german hanomags is pretty decent. The SP guns kinda look like Sturmgeschutzes . Shows someone was trying. I think the vehicles seen in the Spain filmings are spanish national guard. It would be cost prohibitive to transport something as heavy as a tank. Notice that the mausers in season 1 are spanish.
so true, if rommel wasn't indicated in a hitler hit plot, i believe he could have quite possibly taken the africa turf, his bio was amazing, the guy was a pure soldier, he hated politics just wanted to fight, and a near genius so says the book
Thats the only episode where someone on the team got killed, the gunner with the chewing gum driver got it, so thats where the Brit came in to replace him. Good escapist entertainment if watched sparingly, more entertaining for me then Combat! but you have to watch them infrequently or it gets really repetitive, like most TV shows when you get down to it!
Regardless, it WAS cool, such scenes were expensive and difficult to shoot. The battle scene here with the SP howitzers was actually filmed in the US (instead of Spain like the rest of season 1) and scenes from it used for various battles throughout the show's run. Season 2 was filmed here in the states.
Considering if you noticed it was AMERICAN vehicles... the halftracks, and the SPGs!... (not sure about the trucks)I think I could understand why SPGs would be used in a convoy... though one hit would take them out... and the half-tracks were M3s not Hanomags...
True dat. BTW, the British LRDG destroyed more axis aircraft than tha RAF, by raiding their airfields. Instead of the .50 Brownings they used Lewis guns on twin mounts.
i cant believe as a kid I thought this show was so cool. The German "tanks" aren't even tanks! They are US M7 motor carriages which are self propelled howitzers. The half tracks are GMC's too but I could kind of accept that. Did they ever use any real tanks on the show?
I'd love to know how they hang onto those machine guns on the jeeps. No seatbelt obviously. I would be flying out of that jeep in second trying to shoot a machine gun.
@thatrandomguy53 those veteran German troops were mighty poor shots, also. I know the t.v. shows of that day used USA vehicles with German markings. Must have been due to budget and/or unavailability of said vehicles.
Mostly due to the glut of original Allied military vehicles after WW2. This is only 1965, after all. Very few German vehicles survived. And historical accuracy was a very low priority at that time. I always loved the Battle of the Bulge movie, with fleets of dozens of post-WW2 American Patton tanks for the Germans.
Well people sailed on charter boats out of Hawaii for 3 hour tours as well, whats your point? Never mind, I don't need to know that you think Rat Patrol is the real deal.
@Proudnewfoundlander1 I think you're confusing real-life Brit Gary Raymond ("Sgt. Jack Moffitt") with real-life Cajun Pierre Jalbert ("Caje" on COMBAT!), probably because they both wore black berets. While it's possible that Hitchcock's red kepi was something from the French Foreign Legion, it could also have been from the American Civil War. Troy could well have picked up his non-reg Anzac campaign hat in North Africa, and Pettigrew was indeed a moonshine-runnin- good ole boy from the South!
I always loved the Battle of the Bulge movie, with fleets of dozens of post-WW2 American Patton tanks for the Germans. You don't mean swastikas, though. You just mean the regular German crosses.
Pure fantasy. .50 cals don't sound like popguns, they're small cannon, and would have thrown a moving Jeep all over the desert. And why didn't the gunners just` immobilize the trucks first -- would've been easy. Where was the convoy's security cordon -- conveniently on the opposite side of the point of attack. That's not the Afrika Korps way. That guy wearing the steel pot would've had his brains fried -- the desert sun is HOT! Etc. Etc. I did have a Rat Patrol lunch box in 4th grade.
@thatrandomguy53 Tiger VI ? Those doesn't exist. Did you want to say Panzer VI, which is the Tiger I ? Well, those were not built in large numbers : with the four prototypes and all combat and service versions included, 1350 Tiger I were built. Besides, it's a very heavy tank, slow and much proner to mechanical failures than its' weaker, although more reliable, counterparts on the Allies side. And the German used very often captured Allied vehicles. So did the Allies.
to the common viewer this may seem fascinating but to anyone who knows a little about the German weapons of WW 2 this is pure rubbish!! M3 Halftracks modified to look like Skdfz251s and !! what a joke!! And M7 priest SPGs used to represent some german vehicle..... what were they trying to represent with it?? A Panzer or a StuG?? I could throw up just by thinking of this madness!!!
i use to watch this w/my father when it came out, i miss those days, such great memories
Watching this just for Dominic Frontiere's theme music is worth it. Thanks!
Thanks for the posting! I haven't seen this show in 40 years. It was a real favorite as a kid and I actually had a toy Rat Patrol jeep with posable figures and equipment. Anybody else have one?
This IS from the pilot episode, which had a slightly different closing title and end theme..."Hans Gudegast", of course, later changed his name to Eric Braeden, and became a major soap-opera player on "THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS" for years...
I met Larry Casey a couple times over the years in relation to the business he's in now. He said the one thing he kept from the show was...the rebel hat. A very nice guy with strong presence.
You mean the artillery kepi?
A bit of that theme audio would make a dandy ring tone
~ for those of us that grew up watching these lads!
@squirrel672 Montgomery was one of the generals in North Africa. He was lucky enough to meet the great General Patton.
I wish the clip was longer so I could hear more of his music...however, I read that he only recorded about 2 hrs. worth of music for this show & that the editors 'tracked' it for the various episodes....
"Und ve vould haff gotten away mit it, too, if it weren't for those meddling jeeps!"
fivefour. I loved Larry Casey and the series Rat Patrol.
Another favorite of mine was Lee Marvin in "Lawbreaker".
For example:
You Tube Law Breakers HPD Hartford June 1, 1964 Part 1 of 3
These were the great times in TV.
Bruce Willis ought to do this as a movie
he could be play hauptman hans dietrich he is 1/2 german afterall harts War was his greatest role
I didn't get one but remember the toy and show, was ten then. Loved all the WW2 shows like Combat. This theme is great, expect that from Frontiere. Yeah, that's the guy from ze soap. Next time he remember to put armored vehicles at the rear of convoy. Was I the only one to notice the camera helicopter in background?
KICKED SO MUCH ASSS !!!! WITH 2 JEEPS AND 2 50'S DAMNED !!! LOL
joe mer 2 jeeps against the entire Afrikan Korps
Theme by Dominick Frontiere. He later married the widow of Rams owner Carroll Rosenbloom after he was murdered because of an affiliation with gamblers. Later he and wife Georgia were nabbed in a ticket scalping scandal. The Rams were moved to St Louis, Georgia's home town where they won the Super Bowl under Dick Vermiel but they ended up back in LA under new ownership that is, I imagine, slightly less corrupt. Good times.
Thanks! I love this in a many TV theme music!
Never missed an episode when I was a kid, even though I knew what all the vehicles and weapons were, and that .50 cal won't take out tanks and half tracks. HOWEVER, I had the model kit (2 very tiny jeeps w/50s, a Panther and a mk-4 panzer in 1/72),
AND........I had the lunch box. The rest of you may look in awe upon me. Thank you.
I had a 1943 GPW, with a dummy M2 mounted on it. Ran that thing all over around El Mirage dry lake. I'm not awed by lunch boxes. ;)
One of the coolest TV themes ever. I love the full (ending) version!
Towards the end of the unedited version, the gunner with the helmet is hit, thereby opening the door for Gary Raymond (Sgt. Moffitt) to join the squad.
Since US troops fought in North Africa only from November 1942 to May 1943 (and then only in the western desert), they did well to get two seasons' worth of episodes!
The "German" equipment was American M-5 or M-16 Half-tracks and the self propelled guns were mobile howitzers, M-7 105 mm "Priests".
Painted and doctored up with German markings.
Catchy theme. Didn't Dominic Frontiere also do the music for the original Outer Limits too? Arrangers were so creative back then.
every battle scene had those 2 M7s masquerading as Tigers, and they could never hit anything. Real 105mm explosions that close would've flipped those jeeps on their heads. Still it looks jolly good fun to shoot up a convoy like that!
Great action sequence!
Lawrence Casey as Cpl. Mark Hitchcock is actually a real life composite of five very gutsy young Ivy Leaguers who dropped out to join The British Army early on before any other American's took on The Wearmacht in case anyone's curious !
@23dexter89
Madness ? THIS-IS-RAT PATROOOOOL !!! *kicks to the chest*
Salute to Sgt Sam Troy and Captain Hans Dietrich ! What a great TV series bring us lots of good memories.
@Briselance Good point, However in those days films occasionally named Sherman's with swastikas as "Panzer IV's approaching"
He was “the perfect fighting animal,” a man extolled in his own time as a military genius, even by his enemies. Of unquestionable courage and drive, of military dash and elan, he lived by his belief in the importance of direct command, of continuous movement and maneuver, of boldness to the point of rashness. Such was Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, whom history and awed opponents mythologized as the “Desert Fox.”
Even dominant as a junior officer in WWI fighting Italians.
innovative headgear !!!
actually justin tar did his own stunt driving and is one of the drivers in the opening scenes over the sand dune
@GOOSEYGOOSE9 UA was very tight with the Mirisch Brothers up until the '70s. Then UA was bought by the Transamerica Corporation, a conglomerate (shudder!), and went belly-up after the "Heaven's Gate" fiasco. At that point, they were sold to MGM and the logos afterward all said "MGM/UA."
If you'd like to learn more about the whole sordid story, read "Final Cut" by the late Steven Bach. I don't know if it's still in print, but you can probably find a second-hand copy of it somewhere.
That "raid theme" 2 about 00:31 comes from "Stoney Burke"...also scored by Dominic Frontiere...R.I.P.!
AND FURTHERMORE: the Germans didn't have the technology to build tanks that could fire while moving, that was the weakness of even the King Tiger tank. This is why they lost at Kursk and at El Alamein. Plus if a group of Kraut soldiers wanted to move, they had to call all the way up the chain of command to Berlin for permission to do so.
1.45: "Gott in Himmel! Curse you, Rrrrat Patrol!"
My uncle gave me a Aussie Hat that my grandfather brought back from WWII. I played with it and accidentally destroyed it :( I think I was 12.
The German "Tanks" are actualy M7 Preist Self propelled guns.
Yep, and you forgot to mention that the Wearmacht Halftracks are actually U.S. White Truck built Halftracks as well !
@@nicholausbuthmann1421 although by the 1960s very few German tanks were left though consider the US Army lost equipment at Kasserine and Rommel needed every captured item to replace his losses which easily explains some yet the 1950s era Patton tanks
seriously, even patton knew he could never beat rommel, he was a true soldier but he and patton had the upmost respect for each other
@tropicvibe : Yep, and that OL music was later used on the color Fugitive episodes and also on The Invaders.
One of the best war series
People who post critical thoughts about Rat Patrol's authenticity are like someone posting that Buck Rogers ray gun couldn't go through Martian steel, and being serious about it! It's a freaking fictional TV adventure show, it's not based on any facts or claim that it is! Think outside the box dude, you'll enjoy stuff like this a lot more!
I all ways love the rat patrol that I be came a hit and run Recon scout in the army
This is history. The Americans came in and won. They did it with Rat Patrol. There were Aussies there too, and French.
Yes, in the 1st season you sometimes see an M47 Patton tank painted as a panzer, other times as U.S. In the 2nd season, they used an M8 Greyhound armored car a lot but a couple of episodes had an M4 Sherman as a panzer.
Actually, the hood treatment on the GMC halftracks to make them look like german hanomags is pretty decent. The SP guns kinda look like Sturmgeschutzes . Shows someone was trying. I think the vehicles seen in the Spain filmings are spanish national guard. It would be cost prohibitive to transport something as heavy as a tank. Notice that the mausers in season 1 are spanish.
so true, if rommel wasn't indicated in a hitler hit plot, i believe he could have quite possibly taken the africa turf, his bio was amazing, the guy was a pure soldier, he hated politics just wanted to fight, and a near genius so says the book
They sure look awful clean for people living & operating in the desert behind enemy lines.
The guns on the jeeps look like 50-cal. BMG M2 machine guns but the fireing rate sounds way too fast. Sound more like tommygun speed.
Thats the only episode where someone on the team got killed, the gunner with the chewing gum driver got it, so thats where the Brit came in to replace him. Good escapist entertainment if watched sparingly, more entertaining for me then Combat! but you have to watch them infrequently or it gets really repetitive, like most TV shows when you get down to it!
That was cool good memories. Theme songs were in unfortunately that has gone forever
Regardless, it WAS cool, such scenes were expensive and difficult to shoot. The battle scene here with the SP howitzers was actually filmed in the US (instead of Spain like the rest of season 1) and scenes from it used for various battles throughout the show's run. Season 2 was filmed here in the states.
Hans Gudegast(German Commander) is Victor on the soap operas!!!
Hans Gudegast now known as Eric Braeden aka Victor Newman on "the Young and the Restless".
The whole series was like this. Two jeeps would wipe out a German convoy and come out without a scratch.
Considering if you noticed it was AMERICAN vehicles... the halftracks, and the SPGs!... (not sure about the trucks)I think I could understand why SPGs would be used in a convoy... though one hit would take them out... and the half-tracks were M3s not Hanomags...
True dat. BTW, the British LRDG destroyed more axis aircraft than tha RAF, by raiding their airfields. Instead of the .50 Brownings they used Lewis guns on twin mounts.
My brother d love d this show
i cant believe as a kid I thought this show was so cool. The German "tanks" aren't even tanks! They are US M7 motor carriages which are self propelled howitzers. The half tracks are GMC's too but I could kind of accept that. Did they ever use any real tanks on the show?
US. Best soliders in WW2. Love this.
I saw the whole series @ Fry's in Woodland Hills, Ca, this Afternoon. . . .Hope it helps. Gabby!
@meninagorda
Those Germans are part of the Afrika Korps, and used many captured allied vehicules. So did the Allies.
Oh after the disaster at Kasserine Rommel troops captured a lot of our supplies snd equipment to study snd use
Love it! The US Rat patrol certainly beat Rommel. Class American history.
Yes, it is!
There's no trouble that a couple of Army jeeps and .50 caliber machine guns can't solve!
I hope they were V6
What's up with these experts?
Rat Patrol was 30-minute kid show.
Chill out.
irish. Great! Thanks for the comment. The USA is definitely still number one.
Anybody remember his babe-a-licious wife? I think her name was Linda Day.
I had all the rat patrol bubble gum cards
Y
America at its best.
Thats hollywood for you, but it was fun show at the time. Did you know one of the gunners got killed in this particular raid?
How were they killed?
@@bruticusrules1746 In this episode, Gunner #2 is killed which allowed for the addition of Moffitt to the team
I'd love to know how they hang onto those machine guns on the jeeps. No seatbelt obviously. I would be flying out of that jeep in second trying to shoot a machine gun.
+T Gunn That's one of the reasons Justin Tarr and Christopher George left after the second season, they were getting injured.
I didn't know that. In this clip you can clearly see the second jeep's gunner almost flip as the jeep crests the sand dune.
Good post, but NOT the original closing theme for The Rat Patrol.
A Good edit I will agree, but not the original closing.
@thatrandomguy53 those veteran German troops were mighty poor shots, also. I know the t.v. shows of that day used USA vehicles with German markings. Must have been due to budget and/or unavailability of said vehicles.
Mostly due to the glut of original Allied military vehicles after WW2. This is only 1965, after all. Very few German vehicles survived. And historical accuracy was a very low priority at that time.
I always loved the Battle of the Bulge movie, with fleets of dozens of post-WW2 American Patton tanks for the Germans.
Hollywood doesn't care about history and from what I've seen of recent BBC productions neither do they. So get over it.
Well people sailed on charter boats out of Hawaii for 3 hour tours as well, whats your point? Never mind, I don't need to know that you think Rat Patrol is the real deal.
This is so cool. We all owe the Americans so much. They were the masters in desert warfare. They whooped Rommel's ass.
@Proudnewfoundlander1 I think you're confusing real-life Brit Gary Raymond ("Sgt. Jack Moffitt") with real-life Cajun Pierre Jalbert ("Caje" on COMBAT!), probably because they both wore black berets. While it's possible that Hitchcock's red kepi was something from the French Foreign Legion, it could also have been from the American Civil War. Troy could well have picked up his non-reg Anzac campaign hat in North Africa, and Pettigrew was indeed a moonshine-runnin- good ole boy from the South!
Nope, I only saw the Metro Goldwyn Mayer with Lion roaring at the very end.
ha, seems all the films of the time used allied tanks with swastikas, seems that was a sexton
I always loved the Battle of the Bulge movie, with fleets of dozens of post-WW2 American Patton tanks for the Germans.
You don't mean swastikas, though. You just mean the regular German crosses.
Did they shoot this at the Death Valley ?
Spain
Pure fantasy. .50 cals don't sound like popguns, they're small cannon, and would have thrown a moving Jeep all over the desert. And why didn't the gunners just` immobilize the trucks first -- would've been easy. Where was the convoy's security cordon -- conveniently on the opposite side of the point of attack. That's not the Afrika Korps way. That guy wearing the steel pot would've had his brains fried -- the desert sun is HOT! Etc. Etc. I did have a Rat Patrol lunch box in 4th grade.
have you ever even shot an M2?
What Joke ,they in open jeeps one well placed burst of a mg 42 and its siamora Rat Patrol.50 cal is good for light armour but not agianst MB Tanks .
the season 1 end theme is alot different from the season 2 version
Victor Newman!
I thought this was a cool show--when I was a kid. I also liked Combat, Batman (I didn't know what gayness was) and most of all, Captain Scarlet!
@thatrandomguy53
Tiger VI ? Those doesn't exist. Did you want to say Panzer VI, which is the Tiger I ?
Well, those were not built in large numbers : with the four prototypes and all combat and service versions included, 1350 Tiger I were built. Besides, it's a very heavy tank, slow and much proner to mechanical failures than its' weaker, although more reliable, counterparts on the Allies side.
And the German used very often captured Allied vehicles. So did the Allies.
Most faster the willys jeep than those german armoured tanks!
Never saw this before. Looks to me like a TV show about dune buggy dudes winning WW2 single handed.
@cosmicdingo: More like when he was in his 30's.
And this is how we pay homage to great Rommel ?
to the common viewer this may seem fascinating but to anyone who knows a little about the German weapons of WW 2 this is pure rubbish!! M3 Halftracks modified to look like Skdfz251s and !! what a joke!! And M7 priest SPGs used to represent some german vehicle..... what were they trying to represent with it?? A Panzer or a StuG?? I could throw up just by thinking of this madness!!!