This month I am very pleased to be able to bring to you the description of flying the incredible Supermarine Spitfire Mk I, P9374. I first saw this aircraft in the Historic Flying Ltd hangar at Duxford in 2009, and when John Romain told me how its restoration was incorporating so many authentic early Mk I attributes, such as the hand-pumped undercarriage, two-pitch propeller and early Dunlop tyres, to list just a few, I could not wait to see it fly.

Re-enactment group RAF Ops 1939-45 brought the days of the Spitfire’s entry into service back to life at Duxford in September 2011, using P9374 as the focus. Here, dressed in white flying overalls, an Ops 1939-45 “pilot” recreates an RAF squadron pilot’s first taste of the new fighter. Credit: Jarrod Cotter

The fighter made its public debut as a static exhibit on the flight line at the Imperial War Museum Duxford Air Show on September 3-4, 2011. Sitting on Duxford’s grass, with the familiar backdrop of the airfield where Spitfires first appeared on the strength of an RAF squadron in 1938, it looked simply incredible. Later that month it made its public flying debut at the Goodwood Revival.

Many of you will have seen P9374 at these events and been impressed by it, so I am sure that you will enjoy reading John Romain’s fascinating report on flying such an early example of this iconic fighter, and John Dibbs’s stunning air-to-air photography of it high in the skies over Duxford makes the article a fitting tribute to all the work undertaken on this wonderful aeroplane, and all the investment put into it by its owners.

Talking of investment, I was recently extremely fortunate to receive an invitation to the Salute to Bomber Command banquet held in the Natural History Museum on November 8. My sincere thanks to Sqn Ldr Al Pinner, MBE RAF (Ret’d), of TAG Aviation for that. The event was aimed at raising money for the upkeep of the Bomber Command Memorial (BCM) once it is completed next year (see page 23 for more on the banquet). Raising funds in these difficult financial times is a very hard task, but the work of the BCM team, and especially director of fundraising Jim Dooley, ensured that the memorial project could go ahead. Congratulations to all those involved with the BCM for persevering through the many difficulties the project has faced along the way. I look forward to seeing the result of their efforts on June 28 next year.

    This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Subscribe and buy the latest issue here

Since writing my last editorial it has been quite a month, which has once again brought to the fore all the good that people in the historical aviation community do.

Aeroplane editor Jarrod Cotter while on detachment with 14 Sqn in August 1990. Credit: Jarrod Cotter

This year, Remembrance Day will provoke even more emotions than usual for me. As noted in this month’s Battle Honours article, 2011 marks the 20th anniversary of the first Gulf War of 1991. During Operation Granby, which began in August 1990 after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, I was based at RAF Brüggen in West Germany, working on 14 Sqn. Later that month, 14 (Composite) Sqn had deployed to the Gulf.

I had got to know one of the unit’s Panavia Tornado pilots, Flt Lt Keiran Duffy, quite well, and on January 13, 1991, just days before Granby turned into Operation Desert Storm, Keiran and his navigator, Flt Lt Norman Dent, were killed during a very-low-level sortie over the desert in Tornado GR.1 ZD718/BH.

Having read about the RAF, its personnel and operations for most of my life, it still came as a great shock when someone I knew personally was lost under operational circumstances. The realisation of the human cost of war certainly strikes home hard. More Brüggen-based aircrew were lost during operations as the war progressed.

The Gulf War marked a great change in the whole way the RAF operated. For scores of years it had been focussed on the Cold War, and, as I had previously served on the RAF Germany Harrier Force, the threat and potential war zone for which we had trained intensively had been in temperate climes. Soon after the end of the Cold War, the RAF suddenly found itself back in a desert-combat environment for the first time in many years, and a quick change of tactics towards expeditionary operations was called for. Of course, the RAF has adapted to change throughout its history, so this was just the latest new challenge, and one which its personnel once again took in their stride.

So, in this 20th anniversary year of the Gulf War, on Remembrance Day I shall think back to the moment I heard the news that the young Flt Lt Keiran Duffy had been lost doing a job about which he was incredibly passionate. During our talks he had, like myself, always seemed enthused by the ethos and heritage of the RAF.

The respect we pay on Remembrance Day is for the ultimate price paid by so many since 1914, so that we can enjoy a freedom that has cost so much. I would like to express my sincere sympathy and best wishes at this time to anyone who has lost a loved one in the service of our country.

    This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Subscribe and buy the latest issue here

Since writing my last editorial it has been quite a month, which has once again brought to the fore all the good that people in the historical aviation community do.

Hurricane XII “Z5140” of the Historic Aircraft Collection passes over the National Battle of Britain memorial at Capel-le-Ferne on September 15, 2011 — Battle of Britain Day. Credit: Jarrod Cotter

Take for example this month’s cover story, where the RAF Battle of Britain Memorial Flight’s Supermarine Spitfire IIa P7350 has been given new squadron markings. This has been done to pay tribute to an unsung hero of the Battle of Britain and also mark the 95th anniversary of 41 Sqn. What is particularly notable about that is that it highlights just how much pride the personnel of the modern RAF have in their heritage.

Artist Mandy Shepherd’s donation of her atmospheric painting Salute to the Many to the Bomber Command Memorial (BCM), is another perfect example of the generosity shown by so many for this great cause. This painting will be made into a limited-edition print to raise funded for the future upkeep of the memorial once it’s completed. One lucky buyer of a print will then win the original. A driving force behind so much of the BCM’s fundraising efforts has been Jim Dooley of The Dooleys pop group, who was again on hand to co-ordinate the organisation of the publicity for the donation of this valuable piece of art.

Then, on September 15, Battle of Britain Day was marked in just the most amazing way by Action Stations!, whose director Stephen Burt put together a package of passenger helicopter trips flying alongside a Spitfire and a Hawker Hurricane. What made this extra special was that the formations overflew the National Battle of Britain Memorial at Capel-le-Ferne, near Folkestone, in Kent.

Steve deserves to be highly congratulated for this achievement, which not only formed a poignant commemoration of the Battle, but offered his many customers an opportunity to witness it from the air. We’ll bring you more on this in a forthcoming issue.

    This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Subscribe and buy the latest issue here

Last year, during the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, I was privileged to be involved with some of the high-profile events taking place with veterans to mark the occasion, as I was editing a special commemorative issue of Aviation Classics. This year I decided that I would take a different look at the Battle, and opted to re-read my first edition of Winston S. Churchill’s The Second World War, Volume II — Their Finest Hour. This book embraces Mr Churchill’s first days as Prime Minister, the battle and fall of France, the evacuation from Dunkirk and that uneasy summer of 1940 when the enemy was attacking British shores daily.

Resting on the editor’s RAF Ensign is his first edition of Winston S. Churchill’s book subtitled 'Their Finest Hour', thought to be one of his greatest achievements as an historian and writer. Laid on the book is a 1939–1945 Star with Battle of Britain Clasp. To qualify for the clasp, Allied airmen had to have made at least one authorised operational flight with one of the 71 designated Fighter Command squadrons between July 10 and October 31, 1940. Credit: Jarrod Cotter

Winston Churchill led a grim and resolute people in resistance to every challenge, and his rousing wartime speeches must have been a great source of inspiration during those difficult times. With the greater understanding I now have of front-line operations during the Battle, I thought that I would better appreciate his position and mindset; and so it has proved.

One line in particular, regarding the situation faced by Britain’s authorities at the time, caught my attention: “The reader of these pages in future years should realise how dense and baffling is the veil of the unknown”. Fortunately, however, the right people were in place to prepare the country’s defences most effectively against the “unknown”, and the right people were in place to wield those defences.

On September 15, 1940, Winston Churchill was at Chequers and noted that the weather was favourable for the enemy to attack, so he drove to the 11 Group Operations Room at Uxbridge in Middlesex to observe things for himself. In the book he writes of Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park’s comment to him on his arrival: “‘I don’t know,’ said Park, as we went down, ‘whether anything will happen today.’”

But fairly soon the situation had changed, as the following brief extracts highlight: “One after another signals came in, ‘40-plus’, ‘60-plus’; there was even an ‘80-plus’.”

“The Air Marshal himself walked up and down behind, watching with vigilant eye every move in the game, supervising his junior executive hand, and only occasionally intervening with some decisive order, usually to reinforce a threatened area. In a little while all our squadrons were fighting, and some had already begun to return for fuel. All were in the air. The lower line of bulbs were out. There was not one squadron left in reserve.”

“Hitherto I had watched in silence. I now asked: ‘What other reserves have we?’ ‘There are none,’ said Air Vice-Marshal Park. In an account which he wrote about it afterwards he said that at this I ‘looked grave’. Well I might. What losses should we not suffer if our refueling planes were caught on the ground by further raids of ‘40 plus’ or ‘50 plus’! The odds were great; our margins were small; the stakes infinite.”

Be it the 70th or 71st anniversary of the Battle of Britain, the importance of annually commemorating this crucial turning point of the Second World War remains the same. In Sir Winston Churchill’s own words, again taken from his captivating book: “At the summit the stamina and valour of our fighter pilots remained unconquerable and supreme. Thus Britain was saved. Well I might say in the House of Commons: ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

    This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Subscribe and buy the latest issue here