Battle of Britain 80 year anniversary

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The BoB started in July 1940, 80 years ago, the last surviving pilot is John Hemingway, 2nd from left in this photo of 85 Squadron. Think the guy on the far right must have ridden in on his motorcycle ;) certainly a trend setter well before Brando.

Battle of Britain 80 year anniversary
 
I reckon matey far right has plundered the opposition for his flying gear... Had he been blonde he might have been POW, perhaps?
 
Gotta pull out my copy of the Battle of Britain movie sometime soon.
“The essential arithmetic is that our young men will have to shoot down their young men at the rate of four to one, if we're to keep pace at all.”
 
And they kept improving the great Spitfire RR engines to keep ahead of the enemy throughout the war so they could shoot down the V2 rockets.
 
Gotta pull out my copy of the Battle of Britain movie sometime soon.
“The essential arithmetic is that our young men will have to shoot down their young men at the rate of four to one, if we're to keep pace at all.”

In the cemetry at Hay on Wye is a bronze sculpture of Icarus. An astonishing piece. The context is that a local pilot ws able to borrow a Spitfire at theheight of the Battle of Britain , put on a display of aerobatics get it wrong, lose a valuable aircraft and his life and training in the process. Petrol was precious and had a bloodprice in lost shipping across the Atlantic , one wonders how such escapades were permitted.
 
Cheers to those boys.

They won the most important battle of WW2 in Europe. The defeat of the Luftwaffe prevented the invasion of Britain, which eventually led to Britain becoming the world’s largest aircraft carrier, which ultimately bombed and pulverized Nazi industry into dust.

If the RAF had not prevailed in 1940, the consequences for Europe would have been too terrible to contemplate.

The Battle of Britain is a great film. Even the story of how the producers were able to assemble so many rare WW2 aircraft to make the film sequences is fascinating. They had to search the world to locate surviving aircraft. In 1968, the Spanish Air Force still had Henkel 111 bombers in their inventory.
 
Thanks for posting this thread ! We should always honour all the Hero’s of the free world .....
 
here's my BoB tale and it's kinda long and i'm sticking with it.....when I was in 3rd grade (circa 1961) I got a book from the school library on BoB I don't know why but it struck a chord in my little self......in 1983 I went to england looking for WWII RAF bases and spent 2 days at RAF Museum Hendon and several other WWII aviation museums out in the countryside....at the time I was private pilot and member of the Confederate Air Force Carolinas Wing...we restored a Stinson AT19 in RAF colors anyway I put an ad in Folkstone newspaper asking if anyone had any BoB recollections or memorabilia I would love to see it.....I soon got lots of replies, letters, one from widow of Wing Cmd. Peter Parrott also a piece from a crashed Spit MkI .. a lady sent me a letter said she was walking down the road as a teen and was strafed by a 109.....a few months later I got a phone call it was her she said she and her husband were waiting at the Charlotte airport for my wife and i to pick them up!! they spent two weeks with us....they brought me bronze Spit desk model and several large RAF books including the big blue BoB one...After I got my fill of civil war reenacting I joined a local WWII reenacting group I got an RAF WWII Uniform, pattern 1936 boots, Irvin Jacket etc.....I put this on at a few WWII events but realized I was too fat and old to have been a pilot so I still wear the jacket when it's cold and the boots when I ride bikes in cold weather...…….
 
Cheers to those boys.

They won the most important battle of WW2 in Europe. The defeat of the Luftwaffe prevented the invasion of Britain, which eventually led to Britain becoming the world’s largest aircraft carrier, which ultimately bombed and pulverized Nazi industry into dust.

If the RAF had not prevailed in 1940, the consequences for Europe would have been too terrible to contemplate.

The Battle of Britain is a great film. Even the story of how the producers were able to assemble so many rare WW2 aircraft to make the film sequences is fascinating. They had to search the world to locate surviving aircraft. In 1968, the Spanish Air Force still had Henkel 111 bombers in their inventory.
The 1988 series Piece of Cake might have had more flying Spits. If you're OCD you can tell many of the planes are from later in the war than the period covered in the series because they have cannon.
 
Last week ,walking in the local woods ,found a crash site only discovered 25 or so years ago ,a fighter with the pilot seargent still in it. KIds still play in the V1 bomb hole a few hundred yards from our house.
 
Living in a country which was not a participant in the war, though of course affected by it. Still regards those airmen has to remembered and honoured for what they achieved. Without what they did, this world would have been a much worse place to live in.
 
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Watched a programme on TV today and learnt of the V3 supergun near Callais and the mysterious in line blasts in kent that may have been its test run. Just as well the invasion put a stop to that . Perhaps our V1?? crater was also part of that. Will we ever know.
 
When I was a kid, the RAAF had Lincoln bombers which were the extended Lancaster - most impressive. I watched the Lancaster and the Spitfires at Goodwood Revival and got goose-bumps. I was only a toddler in Melbourne, Australia during WW2 but the bombers used to scare the shit out of me. When I was in London 1n 1989, I got a bit of the feeling of what it must have been like. Fortunately for me, my father came home from the war, even though he got bombed in Western Australia and carried a piece of shrapnel. My playmates' dad did not. He was a POW and we only found out he was dead after the two bombs on Japan finished the war.
 
On Sunday I went out for a ride on one of my old Brits. It was one of those rides where everything just clicked. The weather was fabulous and we cantered through beautiful archetypal quintessentially English countryside. Lockdown / Covid stresses just melted away, by the time I got home I was quite elated.

I put the bike away and walked to the house, and that’s when I heard it approaching, unmistakable...

At first I thought it was a Spit, but a Hurricane flew into view, I don’t know what it was doing or why, but it circled above us, very low, in the bright blue skies for a good 5 minutes.

Even my girls came out to see (9 and 12) and I took the opportunity to tell them about the few young men, totally out numbered, who in those exact planes, took on and beat the Nazi war machine, protected our country and turned the tide of the entire war for the entire world. Even they ‘got it’. The sight and sound of the Hurricane just made all so much more real than when they’d learnt about it as ‘facts and figures’ at school.

All in all, an uplifting day !
 
You can experience the full delight of being in a WW2 two seater Spit for a nominal (? Hic!) fee, for an extra fee they will take you over the white cliffs of Dover, all from that WW2 base at Biggin Hill airfield.
 
Yes I’ve seen that outfit, maybe one day, when I’ve won the lottery or similar !
 
Nice to hear your schools still teach “real history” with a focus on the events that affected the entire world ..... wish it were so in more countries .... our shared history is very important for everyone ....
 
Nice to hear your schools still teach “real history” with a focus on the events that affected the entire world ..... wish it were so in more countries .... our shared history is very important for everyone ....
Couldn't agree more, but some people are just not interested. The latest riots of black lives matter if I may say it without being shot down, are, somewhat like the German attitude of burning books pre WW2, etc. and throwing statues into the harbour. Obviously these satues should be removed officially as being offensive, but it is all history, whether it happened 2000 years ago or 200 years ago. At lot of bad things have happened all the way through out history , no matter where you look.
 
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