Reach for the sky

On this August Saturday 70 years ago the Nazis were almost at the door. From the French coast they could view at their leisure the next country they would invade a few miles away across the Channel.

Of course there was the small matter of knocking out the small opposing airforce first. Hermann Goering promised that from August 10 his huge Luftwaffe would have the skies over Britain conquered inside six weeks. It might have seemed a conservative estimate, given the speed with which the Nazis forces had just overrun the Continent.

But they had not correctly judged the nature of the new task – the men they were now facing, the potency of their machines, their secret radar technology and organisation. Above all, the Nazis could not guess, as they toasted the imminent success of their "Adler Tag" (Eagle Day) assault, at the indomitable courage possessed by The Few.

More recently the RAF was having a trying time once again. In Lincolnshire, Squadron Leader Ian Smith was greeting a knot of blazered veterans just as the letters page of the local newspaper was attacking the Red Arrows display team for its low flying and "excessive noise".

Those who had just arrived here to seek out their past among the weed-strewn remnants of runways, the old hangars and NAAFI messes and ration stores weren't dismissive of the environmental concerns of parish councils being voiced in print. But when set against the daily perils these old fliers had faced during the Second World War, well, they were entitled to their wry smiles.

Squadron Leader Smith – "Smithy" to air force insiders – straddles both eras. He saw action in Iraq and Bosnia, flew with the Red Arrows and is now Officer Commanding the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, arguably the most precious collection of military aircraft in the world. It includes five Spitfires, two Hurricanes and one of only two airworthy Lancasters, the bomber with an unforgettable place in Lincolnshire's wartime history.

Smith, with the features, manner and background of a Boy's Own hero, oversees everything in the Memorial Flight, from operations and engineering to flight testing and the training of those who fly the cherished planes. He also plans and manages their display programme. This summer and autumn will be more demanding than usual, with the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain.

"It was the greatest air battle in the history of mankind and we are reflecting on that. We've already received 1,500 requests for fly-pasts," he said.

"The flight has been described as a museum without walls and the fact that the aircraft here are probably the most cared-for anywhere is a tribute to all those airmen who served their country in conflict. Without The Few, and the many, we wouldn't be here now, or living life as we know it. Our motto, Lest We Forget, says it all."

Smith spent four years as a volunteer pilot with the flight before taking command at the end of last year. He describes the job as humbling and feels privileged to be fulfilling a boyhood dream every time he's in the cockpit of a Spitfire. One of them, P7350, will be at

the forefront of the commemorations because it's the only survivor of 1940 still flying.

"We are well aware that we've been entrusted with the nation's aviation heritage and we'll do our utmost to keep these beautiful and priceless machines where they belong: in the air."

The forerunner of the BBMF was established in Kent, the front-line during the Battle of Britain, but had to move because it needed to be at an operational base. Biggin Hill's loss was Lincolnshire's gain, and no county had a stronger case. At RAF Coningsby the icons are exhibited not far from the latest generation of combat aircraft, the Eurofighter Typhoon.

They are also surrounded by so much wartime heroism, innovation and nostalgia that the county has turned it into a comprehensive tourism and educational project.

Lincolnshire was known as Bomber County during the war – 49 bases, the most of anywhere in Britain. Most famously it was the home of 617 Squadron whose Dambuster raids in May 1943 have come to epitomise the daring and sacrifice of Bomber Command, many of whose 73,700 casualties were stationed in the area.

But bombers weren't the entire story. Fighter Command was here too and this month they will be marking Lincolnshire's Battle of Britain Day and paying tribute to the Spitfires and Hurricanes controlled from RAF Digby which defended industrial sites in the East Midlands, South Yorkshire and the Humber against waves of German attacks. On August 21, for instance, just a dozen fighters were available to repel the Luftwaffe over the region. They helped to save the Rolls Royce works in Derby, a major target for the enemy because it produced Merlin engines for the very planes shooting them down.

Among those who passed through Digby was Frank Whittle. On May 15, 1941, he was a few miles away at Cranwell where a plane powered by his invention, the jet engine, heralded the next great leap in aeronautics. That means next year is yet another anniversary to add to the list of Phil Bonner and Dave Harrigan. Both served in the RAF and between them they now head Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire, a programme which aims to attract more visitors to its 10 key sites, plus less

well-known airfields, and develop links with schools.

The strategy, backed by councils and Heritage Lottery funding, is that rather than fly solo, established venues and smaller, independently-run museums can be marketed better when they are in formation. It includes places like Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre, run by the Panton family at the former airfield on their land at East Kirkby. It was created by farmers Fred and Harold Panton in memory of their brother Christopher, a flight engineer at the Skipton-on-Swale bomber base in North Yorkshire who was killed during a raid on Nuremburg in March, 1944.

He flew in Halifaxes and having lost the chance to buy one for 100 shortly after the war, the Pantons eventually obtained a Lancaster. It's been superbly restored and for an experience that's almost beyond price, for 200 a visitor can have a brief physical sense of what it was like to be one of the seven crew members.

The plane doesn't fly, but in taxiing, or more accurately, bumping across a grass airstrip – much like the Dambusters' take-off to their targets – you discover the noise and vibrations; the claustrophobic spaces where during missions of up to nine hours, each airman, his movements further restricted by layers of clothing, had a specific task that collectively involved trying to destroy the enemy and ensure the plane's survival against appalling odds.

You wonder how the rear gunner, cramped in his rotating perspex turret, dealt with the cold and fear and the knowledge that at any moment he might have to struggle into a parachute and try and bale out. It strikes you as almost unbelievable that any came back to fight another day. Thousands didn't. At this base alone, the lives of 848 air and ground crew were lost, and for those who came through it there was to be no campaign medal because post-war politics were critical of Bomber Command's tactics.

Andrew and Louise Panton now manage the centre dedicated to their great-uncle and all the others they never knew. They are both in their mid-20s, already older than most of the bomber crews and many more whose lives they honour in the memorial chapel at East Kirkby.

"They left us with a debt we cannot repay," says Louise, and there are similar feelings all around Lincolnshire's airfield trail. One of the most evocative places is the mock-Tudor Petwood Hotel at Woodhall Spa. Beside an oak tree in the car park is a rusty cylinder filled with concrete. But for the small notice in front, it could be an incongruous piece of scrap metal. It's the remains of a prototype "bouncing bomb" designed by Barnes Wallis and dropped by 617 Squadron to destroy German dams and flood the Ruhr valley.

The hotel became the squadron's officers' mess and their ghosts linger in the snug bar dedicated to them and among the panelled rooms and corridors. Walls are filled with photographs and paintings of aerial dramas. There's a flying suit and helmet, scale models and memorabilia that includes a front page newspaper report of the Dambusters' raid which earned Wing Commander Guy Gibson the Victoria Cross.

In a frame near reception there's an image of his successor as the squadron's CO, Group Captain Leonard Cheshire. Beneath it are his ribbons, including one that signifies the VC he was awarded after completing 102 missions as a bomber pilot. For all its modern amenities, the Petwood is a time capsule, clinging to a previous age just as it did during the years of war. A history of the hotel includes a description of life there for officers taken from Paul Brickhill's classic book about the Dambusters: "stockbroker's Tudor, a pleasant place, agreeably panelled and set in gardens. The beer was good (today's version is Lincolnshire-brewed and, naturally, called Bomber County), WAAFs in white coats served your meals and you slept in a bed with sheets, remote from battle. You lived like a normal human

and it fortified that deceitful little thought 'it can't happen to me'. Among the waiters, white linen and conversation the war shrank."

It was an era of personal extremes and for at least one officer nothing that followed was comparable. "The happiest time of my life," he said.

Details of Battle of Britain events in Lincolnshire, its RAF stations and air shows and the airfield trail: www.aviationlincolnshire.com and www.visitlincolnshire.com Petwood Hotel www.petwood.co.uk

YP MAG 7/8/10