Where Was Band of Brothers Filmed? Every Location by Episode

The Short Answer: Hatfield Aerodrome, Plus a Short Shoot in Switzerland

The series was filmed in 2000 at Hatfield Aerodrome in Hertfordshire, about 30 miles north of London. The disused airfield became the production's base, which the crew nicknamed "Hatfield Studios". Two huge hangars served as soundstages, and next to them stood a backlot where much of the series was shot.

The backlot reused a town set first built for Saving Private Ryan, expanded to cover around 12 acres, and the same streets were re-dressed and filmed from different angles to stand in for 12 different places across Europe, including Carentan, Eindhoven, Bastogne, Foy and Haguenau. In effect, Easy Company's war from Normandy to Germany was filmed in one corner of Hertfordshire.

A handful of real English locations were used as well: Hambleden in Buckinghamshire, North Weald Airfield in Essex and Bourne Wood in Surrey. The only filming outside England was in September 2000, when the production moved to the Bernese Oberland in Switzerland for scenes in the final episode, using the Swiss Alps and lakes to stand in for Bavaria and Austria.

The sets are long gone. The old aerodrome is now a university campus, a business park and housing, but part of it is open to the public as the Ellenbrook Fields nature park, with the Hatfield Aerodrome History Trail running through it.

Every Episode at a Glance

Episode 1, Currahee

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The Currahee mountain runs and the field training in the woods were filmed at Bourne Wood, near Farnham in Surrey. It is one of the busiest film locations in England, and its slopes are familiar from many other productions, including the opening battle of Gladiator.

Most of the other training and barracks scenes, standing in for Camp Toccoa and the American camps, were filmed on the backlot at Hatfield Aerodrome.

The episode's English village is not Aldbourne at all but Hambleden, a village in the Chilterns near Henley-on-Thames in Buckinghamshire. Its church, street and shop fronts became Easy Company's billet village, and much of it still looks as it did on screen, including the butcher's shop.

Aldbourne on screen, Hambleden today

Aldbourne as depicted in Band of Brothers, and Hambleden, where it was filmed, as it is today.

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The opening scenes on the airfield, with the paratroopers waiting to take off for Normandy, were filmed at North Weald Airfield in Essex. The C-47s seen taking off were added with CGI.

Really happened at

Easy Company trained at Camp Toccoa in Georgia, where the real Currahee Mountain stands, and spent their time in England billeted in Aldbourne, Wiltshire, before leaving for Normandy from Upottery Airfield in Devon. The airfield at Upottery survives in part with a heritage centre in its original Nissen huts. See Easy Company's real locations in England.

Can you visit?

Yes, all three English locations are open to visitors. Bourne Wood is free to visit and open to the public, though the car park is pay and display, and parts may occasionally close for filming. Hambleden is a working village, and St Mary's Church is usually open, though the Manor House is private. North Weald is still a working airfield with a museum.

Episode 2, Day of Days

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The night jump was filmed inside a hangar at Hatfield. The production mounted a real C-47 fuselage, with its wings removed, on two motion rigs, and almost all the scenes inside the aircraft were shot there.

The Normandy hedgerows, fields and trenches were built on the Hatfield backlot, including the flooded trench Winters runs along, which was filmed in very wet conditions.

Really happened at

Easy Company's men landed scattered across the Cotentin around Sainte-Marie-du-Mont and Sainte-Mère-Église. Lt Meehan's C-47 was shot down near Beuzeville-au-Plain, and Winters led the assault on the German guns at Brécourt Manor that morning. The convoy ambush shown under a railway bridge actually took place at a crossroads, the junction of the D115 and D423 about 3 km east of Sainte-Mère-Église.

The ambush: a bridge on screen, a crossroads in reality

The crossroads where the ambush, shown under a railway bridge in Band of Brothers, actually took place.

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Read more about what happened to Lt Meehan, the Easy Company memorial at Brécourt, the C-47 crash site at Beuzeville-au-Plain and visiting Sainte-Mère-Église.

Can you visit?

The Hatfield hangars and backlot are not open to the public. The real places in Normandy are. The Easy Company memorial stands on the road near Brécourt Manor, although the field itself is not generally open, and the Meehan crash site has its own memorial.

Episode 3, Carentan

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Carentan was the Hatfield backlot, and the street fighting, the assault into the town and the battle at Bloody Gulch were all filmed there. The set designers copied some real details closely, including the shape and signs of the café on the corner where Easy Company came under fire, though the upper windows and the neighbouring buildings differ from period photographs.

Carentan on screen and today

Looking down the road into Carentan towards the corner shown as the Café Normandie in Band of Brothers.

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Hambleden appears again towards the end of the episode, once Easy Company is back in England. The scene where they ride through the village with a motorcycle and sidecar was filmed there, with Hambleden once again standing in for Aldbourne.

Really happened at

Easy Company reached the outskirts of Carentan in the early hours of 12 June 1944. The real site of the attack is on the northern edge of the town, where Route d'Auvers meets Rue de Périers.

Can you visit?

The set is gone, but the real Carentan is easy to visit, and the junction where the attack went in can still be found today. The corner café that the set copied so closely is no longer standing.

Episode 4, Replacements

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No Dutch location was used. Eindhoven's liberation celebrations and the street fighting in Nuenen were both filmed on the Hatfield backlot, re-dressed as Dutch towns.

Really happened at

Easy Company jumped into the Netherlands for Operation Market Garden, entered Eindhoven, and fought at Nuenen.

Can you visit?

Only the real places. The Hatfield set no longer exists.

Episode 5, Crossroads

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The exterior scenes for the fighting on "the Island" were again filmed on the Hatfield backlot. Tom Hanks directed the episode, and fog rolling across the flat airfield slowed the shoot. As cinematographer Remi Adefarasin put it, "Hatfield is a low-lying site and very flat, ideal for an airfield."

Winters' leave in Paris was never filmed in Paris. The Métro exit was a partial set filmed against a bluescreen and combined with motion-control shots of miniature French buildings.

Really happened at

The crossroads and the dike were on "the Island", the strip of land between the Rhine and the Waal in the Netherlands, before the company was pulled back to Mourmelon-le-Grand in France.

Can you visit?

The real places, yes. The set, no.

Episode 6, Bastogne

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The forest in Bastogne was not a forest at all. Production designer Tony Pratt filled an entire hangar at Hatfield with a forest set: several hundred real pine trees and 250 more built by the special-effects department, a painted backdrop covering all four walls, and thousands of tons of earth spread across the hangar floor to make a raised forest floor. It took four weeks to dress the set, and almost all of the episode's forest, foxhole and shelling scenes were filmed inside it.

The snow was fake too, made from more than 300,000 pounds of paper mixed with polymers. Snow effects supervisor David Crownshaw called it "the biggest amount ever used on one set, for anything."

The scenes in the town of Bastogne itself, including the aid station and the church, were filmed on the Hatfield backlot, and the airborne resupply drop was added with CGI.

Really happened at

Easy Company held the line in the Bois Jacques, the woods north of Bastogne near the village of Foy, in the winter of 1944 to 1945.

Can you visit?

The hangar forest is long gone. The real woods are not. The Bois Jacques can be visited today, and you can still see foxholes among the trees, although they have been re-dug since the war. There is also a 101st Airborne monument south of Foy.

Episode 7, The Breaking Point

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About two-thirds of the episode was filmed in the same hangar forest, including the artillery barrages with their tree bursts. In one 20-second stretch more than 100 explosions went off.

The attack on Foy was stitched together from three different locations over three weeks: the hangar forest, a real pine forest about 20 minutes from the set, and the backlot dressed as Foy. Landmarks such as a haystack and a house were moved from one site to another so the views would match.

Really happened at

The real attack came out of the Bois Jacques and down the slope into Foy, a small village just north of Bastogne.

Can you visit?

Foy can be visited, and the view from the edge of the woods down to the village is the one the production worked so hard to recreate.

Episode 8, The Last Patrol

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The Hatfield backlot was re-dressed once more, this time as Haguenau in Alsace, for the town, the river crossing and the night patrol to capture German prisoners.

Really happened at

Haguenau, Alsace, in February 1945.

Can you visit?

Only the real Haguenau. The set no longer exists.

Episode 9, Why We Fight

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The German town scenes, standing in for Thalheim and Landsberg, were filmed on the Hatfield backlot. The concentration camp was a replica of the Kaufering IV camp, built in Hatfield and filmed over a week to ten days. The production used period Allied film and material from historian Anton Posset and a Landsberg citizens' association as reference.

Really happened at

The real camp was one of the Kaufering subcamps near Landsberg am Lech in Bavaria. The sites are memorialised today, including the European Holocaust Memorial at the former Kaufering VII camp in Landsberg.

Can you visit?

The set was temporary and has been removed. The memorials in Landsberg can be visited.

Episode 10, Points

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This is the only episode filmed outside England. In September 2000 the production moved to the Bernese Oberland in Switzerland with around 300 extras and 40 original military vehicles.

• Grandhotel Giessbach, above Lake Brienz, played the lakeside hotel at Zell am See, including the officers' quarters and the German general's surrender.
• Stadthausplatz in Unterseen, next to Interlaken, became the square at Zell am See for the military parade, with the road signs changed to read Zell am See. Winters' swim was filmed partly on the lakeshore here and partly at Giessbach.
• Neugasse in Interlaken stood in for Berchtesgaden.
• The Grimsel Pass provided the road up to the Eagle's Nest.
• Schwanden and Hofstetten, near Brienz, were used for Easy Company's arrival in Austria.
• Interlaken airfield was the setting for the closing baseball game.

A few street scenes were also filmed back at Hatfield.

Really happened at

Easy Company ended the war in Berchtesgaden in Bavaria and then Zell am See in Austria. Neither town was used for filming.

Can you visit?

Yes. The Grandhotel Giessbach is still a working hotel, normally open from spring to autumn, and is reached by boat across Lake Brienz and a historic funicular. It does not make much of its Band of Brothers connection. The square in Unterseen looks much the same, although, as the town's former mayor Simon Margot has noted, "the trees under which the unit parked their vehicles in the film have given way to a parking lot." The Grimsel Pass is a high alpine road, usually open only in summer.

Can You Visit the Band of Brothers Filming Locations?

Most of what was filmed has gone. The Hatfield sets were demolished, and the hangar forest and replica camp were temporary. But several of the real filming locations in England are easy day trips from London:

• Hambleden, Buckinghamshire (Aldbourne): the best preserved and most recognisable. Train to Henley-on-Thames or Marlow, then a taxi. Combine it with Henley.
• North Weald Airfield, Essex: a working airfield with a museum. Central line to Epping, then a short taxi ride.
• Bourne Wood, Surrey (Currahee): free to walk, with pay-and-display parking. Nearest station is Farnham.
• Hatfield, Hertfordshire: walk Ellenbrook Fields and the Hatfield Aerodrome History Trail on the site of the old aerodrome.

If you are in Switzerland, the episode 10 locations around Interlaken and Lake Brienz are all easy to reach, with Giessbach the highlight.

But the places that are really worth the trip are the real ones. Aldbourne and Upottery in England, and Brécourt, Sainte-Mère-Église and Carentan in Normandy, are where it actually happened, and many of them have changed surprisingly little. See Band of Brothers Real Locations in England and Normandy and visiting Sainte-Mère-Église.

FAQs

Where was Band of Brothers filmed?

Almost entirely in England, mainly at Hatfield Aerodrome in Hertfordshire, where a single backlot was re-dressed as Carentan, Eindhoven, Bastogne and the other towns. Real English locations included Hambleden in Buckinghamshire, North Weald Airfield and Bourne Wood. Some scenes for the final episode were filmed in Switzerland.

Was Band of Brothers filmed in Normandy?

No. None of the series was filmed in France. The Normandy scenes, including Carentan, were filmed at Hatfield Aerodrome in Hertfordshire.

When was Band of Brothers filmed?

In 2000. The main shoot was at Hatfield over about eight months, and the Swiss scenes for the final episode were filmed in September 2000.

Where was Currahee filmed in Band of Brothers?

The Currahee mountain runs in Episode 1 were filmed at Bourne Wood, near Farnham in Surrey, England. The real Currahee Mountain is in Georgia, beside Camp Toccoa, where Easy Company trained.

Where were the Bastogne scenes in Band of Brothers filmed?

Inside a hangar at Hatfield Aerodrome, which was filled with real and artificial pine trees, a painted backdrop and tons of earth to create an indoor forest. The snow was made from paper mixed with polymers.

Which village was used for Aldbourne in Band of Brothers?

Hambleden, a village near Henley-on-Thames in Buckinghamshire. The real Aldbourne is in Wiltshire.

Where did Easy Company really train in England?

Easy Company was billeted in Aldbourne, Wiltshire, and left for Normandy from Upottery Airfield in Devon. See Band of Brothers Real Locations in England and Normandy.

Phil – creator of Normandy War Guide
I started the site more than a decade ago after my first trip to Normandy and have been hooked ever since. I visit a few times each year to explore new sites and update the guide. Over the years I've also transcribed thousands of WWII war diaries and scanned original maps to keep this history accessible for everyone.