Spitfire Summer
If you can’t pilot a Spitfire, flying alongside one – and a Hurricane – has to be the next best thing
ONE OF THE many delights of an English summer is hearing the distinctive growl of a Merlin engine, peering up into the blue sky and instantly recognising the aircraft from its unmistakable elliptical wing-shape. Spitfire! Cue a tear welling up in the eye of any chap or chap-ess brought up on a diet of Airfix kits and re-runs of The Battle
of Britain on a wet bank holiday. Until recently, the only way to see a Spitfire in flight was to develop a crick in your neck and squint against the light as you struggled to keep track of the distant silhouette. However, thanks to a new operation based at Goodwood Aerodrome – yes, the one that lies within the race circuit, formerly a World War Two fighter base – you can now get up close and personal with a Spitfire and a Hurricane, by flying alongside them in a helicopter over countryside that hasn’t changed much since these aircraft were on operations over 70 years ago.
The Battle of Britain Experience was launched this summer, and Octane was invited on one of its first sorties. Charles Osborne is its general manager and public face: with his wax-tipped moustache he certainly looks the part. ‘I used to work in the Foreign Office in Denmark, and came over to Goodwood for my father’s 80th birthday,’ he explains. ‘He was flown in a 1943 North American Harvard trainer, while friends and I flew alongside in a modern Cessna.
‘A year later I was drinking in a local pub, where the Goodwood Spitfire pilots hang out, and met Matt Jones from the Boultbee Flight Academy. When he contacted me later to say that he was setting up a new venture for people to fly alongside Spitfires, and did I want to join him and help run it, I “got it” immediately, because seeing my dad in the Harvard had been one of the most memorable moments in my life.’
The original idea was to fly in formation with Mk-IX Spitfire R232 – hence the name of the company website, flyingwithspitfires.com – but for 2017 this has been broadened to include a genuine ex-Battle of Britain Hawker Hurricane, too. The only airworthy survivor from the battle, this 1940-built Hurricane, R4118,
is much rarer than a Spit and, to some, it’s more the connoisseur’s choice. Seeing it and R232 in close formation truly is a unique opportunity.
Customers of the Experience are taken up in a matched pair of Bell 206L Long-Ranger helicopters, but even these technological marvels can’t keep pace with the WW2 fighters. A 206L has a maximum speed of about 140mph, whereas the Hurricane’s is over 300mph and the Spitfire’s another 100mph on top of that. So the warbirds don’t like being kept hanging around: the helicopters take to the air first, and then the fighters taxi onto Goodwood’s authentically wartime grass strip and play catch-up. Today, because the weather is unseasonably hot for an English summer, the Rolls-Royce Merlin engines won’t even be started until we’re airborne in the Bells, and we’ll rendezvous above the former Tangmere Aerodrome, just three miles or so from Goodwood.
Tangmere was also a Battle of Britain airfield and finally closed in 1970; about a third of it is now given over to plant nursery glasshouses, which gleam like a lake as both helicopters whop-whop-whop their way towards the coast. Its perimeter road and some of the main runways are still clearly visible as we hover above them, waiting for the fighters to leave Goodwood. Suddenly, there’s a crackle over the intercom and the chopper pilot warns us that the Hurricane is approaching – rapidly! Seconds later it streaks past on our starboard side, fast and low, and just for a moment we have a glimpse of what it must have been like to be a German bomber crew being surprised by a hurriedly scrambled fighter.
Then there’s a flash of that famous elliptical wing as the Spitfire roars past on the other side, and both aircraft head out towards open sea, the helicopters lumbering after them. Not for the first time on this trip, I’ll wish I was sitting up front next to the pilot: if you’re in the main compartment, whether facing backwards or forwards, your literal ‘window of opportunity’ to spot the warbirds is necessarily limited; plus you can’t see much of what’s happening on the other side of the helicopter. That’s why the co-pilot’s seat commands a premium price.
We’re taking a clockwise route, out to the sea, turning west and hugging the coast, before heading back north and east. It’s a glorious cloudless day, sea and sky that shade of blue more normally associated with the South of France, the kind of perfect weather that must have made the aerial battles seem even more surreal, 77 years ago.
Then, as the helicopters settle in a comfortable cruise, the Spitfire eases alongside and holds station, seemingly almost close enough to touch; the pilot has his canopy open and I can see that he’s wearing his facemask but has his goggles pushed up onto his forehead, and I can count every rivet on the gleaming alloy airframe.
It’s a wonderful, other-worldly experience. We’re so accustomed to viewing these aircraft on the ground, static and inert, sitting with apparent disdain, nose-up, on their mainwheels, that it comes as a genuine shock to see them in their natural element, sleek shapes revealed for what they truly are – like watching sharks swim in a tank just yards from your nose in an aquarium. So few people will have the chance to do this that it makes you feel genuinely privileged, and for these precious moments the hefty price of admission feels irrelevant.
Suddenly, as if bored, the Spitfire blasts forward and peels away, up and in front of the helicopter; we can actually feel the vortex generated by its slipstream. For a moment, we lose track of it – but then it reappears again on the other side, in close formation with the Hurricane. Two of World War Two’s most iconic aircraft (for once, it doesn’t feel like hyperbole to use the ‘i’ word), just yards away from your window seat, set against a stunning backdrop of English countryside. Cameraphones click as we struggle to convey the majesty of the image.
But I’d make a suggestion: don’t waste your time trying to record your experience in digital pixels. Live in the moment instead. Etch those memories onto your brain cells rather than store them on a computer chip. It’s a fleeting opportunity, and one that you should savour for every second. And I challenge you not to feel a prickle at the corner of your eye as you do so.
THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN EXPERIENCE operates once a month until 1 October 2017. Prices range from £399 to £649, depending on seat position in the helicopter, and flights last for 20 minutes; see www.flyingwithspitfires.com.
‘It comes as a genuine shock to see these aircraft in their natural element, like sharks swimming’