Just had a telephone call interrupted by the racket made by 4 Merlins attached to the front end of a Lancaster going over our house…I am sure that they could find another route back to Coningsby !

Mick

I live about four miles from the Shuttleworth Collection and Duxford is approx twenty five miles ESE of me and Little Gransden is about twenty miles NE of me so there is always something passing over the house or waiting its turn to go and display at Shuttleworth.

Martin P

Dad watched a big raid massing up over Reading one evening.

‘I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that’ was pretty much his thought at the time !

W.

W.

Danny,

That film you reffered to was The Battle of Britain, the ME109 was a Spanish version with a Merlin engine fitted, a lot of the filming was done mostly in East Anglia and I went about every day with a camera with a long lens on my passenger seat.

Just a a blinding flash BoB was made in 1969 now I'm curious what the film was

Martin P

Edited By martin perman on 01/06/2014 20:48:23

I was 7 years old on D Day, at 0400 I was woken by the noise of all the bombers going South. Dawn was just breaking and I watched from East west and South and North and there was not a piece of sky without an aircraft.

The next morning at about 0300 a US bomber crashed about 200 yards from our hose, unfortunately all were killed. We were still finding bits of it several years later. 2 of them collided, the other crashed in Rochester I believe.

Prior to D Day lots of Army units tracked through the Kent lanes, as kids, they gave us chocolate and biscuits, quite welcome as I was always hungry. My Father went over on the 3rd day as he was in a Bofors Ack Ack unit, he stopped on the A2 to speak to us and I did not see him again until 1947.

We had an Airedale dog and he would get up and go under the table and Mother would say, 'Join him' as he would hear the German bombers long before the sirens went off.

Clive

Probably the TV version of "A piece of cake". The film, like the book, was somewhat controversial in that it suggested that not all of the few were jolly good chaps. Well worth a read.

Rod

Over the next few months some of you will probably see some WW1 fighters flying around Britain, they left in containers a couple of months ago from Sir Peter Jackson's collection, so you might hear the sound of a rotary engine Sopworth Pup or similar. Ian S C

I was once on holiday in the IoM and monitoring the Ronaldsway control tower frequency on my scanner radio from a hilltop. Out of the blue, the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight called in, said they were transiting back to Lincolnshire after an air show in Northern Ireland, and would they like a flypast? Would they??? So I watched the Lancaster, Spitfire and Hurricane do a few circuits of the airfield, to the distant sound of six Merlins, even from a few miles away. There wasn't time to get to the airport.

Geoff

When the The Battle of Britain was being filmed at Duxford where a lot of the filming was based.

The motorbike sprinters used Duxford but we were transferred to RAF Bassingbourn when the filming was on we had glances of the air action and sounds of gunfire.

Paul

Riding my motorbike through the glen, no other traffic, beautiful peaceful day. RAF Tornado crept up behind, overtook (literally) and carried on along the road about 50 feet above. Bit noisier than a Spit and evocative only of a change of underwear.

Many moons ago, when "Luton Approach" was still at the airport, I was the radar controller on duty one Saturday afternoon. An RAF Avro Vulcan called me to overfly the airfield en route to its home base up north. A quick check with the Tower controller ensured that there were no impending departures and he was given approval. (We always encouraged unusual aircraft to overfly in those days, as a lot of aircraft enthusiasts frequented the spectators area.) As the Vulcan got closer, the pilot enquired if the circuit was clear so that he could descend "a bit". Another check with the tower – yes, no problem. Approval given to fly north along the axis of the north-south grass runway. Vulcan proceeds to disappear down the middle of the radar display, very shortly followed by a deafening noise in the radar room. On the intercom to the tower. "What the ****** was that?" I enquired. It transpired that the Vulcan had, indeed, descended "a bit" – to less than 50 feet – and then stood it on its tail with full re-heat on and went near- vertical to 3000ft. That rattled the windows for miles around and generated one of the biggest series of noise complaints ever. Miserable buggers! The tower controller and I got a rollicking on Monday, when the big guns got in, but it was worth it – even if I didn't get to see it in the flesh.

John

Edited By John Hinkley on 02/06/2014 17:13:14

Edited By John Hinkley on 02/06/2014 17:14:18

John Hinkley,

Here is another Vulcan memory for you

… Have a look around 19'24"

I was working at Woodford at the time, on the top [3rd] floor of the office block.

After the formal display, it called to say farewell to all the bases, etc. … including Woodford.

As we gazed [straight and level] through the office window; the sky was blacked out by the mighty Vulcan, rolled over at 90°, with the Bomb-Bay doors open. … Every car-alarm in the area went off, and there wasn't a dry eye in the house!

MichaelG.