![F. Y. C. Knox Members of Royal Ulster Rifles waiting on improvised pier of lorries to evacuate Dunkirk during low tide.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/battle-of-dunkirk-01.jpg?quality=85&w=2400)
Though the characters in Christopher Nolan’s new film Dunkirk are fictional, the events among which they find themselves are based on a very real moment in World War II history, and the daring rescue of British forces who had reached a point of no return after fleeing from a German blitz in May of 1940. Relatively few photographs made it out of Operation Dynamo but it’s clear from what does exist — a sampling of which can be seen above — that those days in Dunkirk were harrowing ones.
And, though photographic and video documentation of the real events may be sparse, some of the actual artifacts of that time have been well preserved. For example, some of the most memorable scenes in the film involve Tom Hardy as a Spitfire pilot sparring with Germans and the “little ships” that helped to rescue British forces — one such real Spitfire plane and little ship can be found in the collection of the Imperial War Museums, from whose collection the archival video footage below is also taken.
![Ship, Fishing Boat 'Tamzine', British Tamzine was the smallest vessel to participate in the Dunkirk evacuation and is now on display at IWM London. Originally intended to be a fishing boat, Tamzine was requisitioned for use in Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of the BEF from the beaches of Dunkirk, 27 May – 4 June 1940.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/battle-of-dunkirk-little-boat.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
The fishing boat pictured at left, Tamzine, was one of more than 1,000 “little ships” that civilians provided to ferry stranded men from the shallow beach at Dunkirk to the bigger Navy ships parked in a deeper part of the English Chanel between May 26, 1940, to June 4, 1940. Midway through the evacuation, the Germans Luftwaffe carried out air raids — as if the rescue effort hadn’t already been harrowing enough — and the Spitfire pictured below was shot down on a French beach, where it was covered by sand and not dug up for about 50 years. (It was restored to good condition before being displayed.)
![General view of Mark I Supermarine Spitfire N3200 in Hangar 4 at Mark I Supermarine Spitfire N3200 in Hangar 4 at IWM Duxford. This Spitfire was based at Duxford before the battle and crash-landed on a French beach on 26 May 1940. Before it crashed, the aircraft shot down a Junkers JU 87 Stuka dive bomber.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/battle-of-dunkirk-spitfire-mark.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
John Delaney, one of the museum’s experts on the collection, explains that at that point in the war, the British armed forces hadn’t gotten together an effective system of propaganda newsreels. As a result, news cameraman Charles Martin of the news agency Pathé is said to have been the only one documenting the event, and because when he joined in to help with the evacuation there are few photos in general of the operation.
“All these guys were abandoning everything they had, any worldly possessions, to get on the boat and get out, because they didn’t want the boats to get weighed down with their cameras,” says Delaney. “You’d expect it’d be the Army who would save the civilians, in this case it was the civilians who saved the Army.”
![F. Y. C. Knox Members of Royal Ulster Rifles waiting on improvised pier of lorries to evacuate Dunkirk during low tide.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/battle-of-dunkirk-01.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![WWII France Dunkirk Evacuation Two of the many small boats which helped to bring the Allied troops in the emergency evacuation across the English Channel from Dunkirk, France, are shown on June 4, 1940 in World War II.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/battle-of-dunkirk-02.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![WWII France Dunkirk Burning Oil Tanks WWII France Dunkirk Burning Oil Tanks](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/battle-of-dunkirk-03.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![WWII France Dunkirk Soldiers Evacuated WWII France Dunkirk Soldiers Evacuated](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/battle-of-dunkirk-04.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![WWII France Dunkirk Troops Evacuated WWII France Dunkirk Troops Evacuated](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/battle-of-dunkirk-05.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![WWII France Dunkirk Soldier Rests WWII France Dunkirk Soldier Rests](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/battle-of-dunkirk-06.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![WWII England Soldiers Return From Dunkirk WWII England Soldiers Return From Dunkirk](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/battle-of-dunkirk-07.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
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Write to Olivia B. Waxman at olivia.waxman@time.com