The Few fly again in memory of Battle of Britain’s Hardest Day
THEY are the glorious fighting machines that 75 years ago were helping to fight off the mighty Luftwaffe against seemingly impossible odds.
Yesterday formations of Spitfires and Hurricanes roared across the skies of England once again to mark the ‘Hardest Day’ of the Battle of Britain.
In spectacular fashion, 24 aircraft circled above the South East in one of the largest commemorative flights ever assembled – in tribute to the heroism of ‘the Few’ on a pivotal day of the Second World War.
On August 18, 1940, the Nazis launched a huge air offensive to try to cripple the UK, unleashing 850 attacks in under eight hours. The plan was to knock out Allied aircraft while they were still on the ground by targeting key Fighter Command stations.
At one point, there were 100 German planes in the sky above Britain. But the RAF managed to fight off the German raiders in what was later acknowledged as the deadliest day of fighting in the Battle of Britain.
The RAF and Fleet Air Arm lost 68 aircraft – 31 in air combat – while 69 German aircraft were destroyed or damaged beyond repair.
Two days later Sir Winston Churchill made his famous: ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few’ speech. Yesterday 18 Spitfires and six Hurricanes took off from the former RAF airfield at Biggin Hill, one of the bases that came under attack on that fateful day in 1940.
Around 3,000 people gathered at the Kent airfield – now a commercial airport bordering south east London – to hear the throaty roar of the fighters’ famous Rolls-Royce Merlin engines. Watching was Squadron Leader Tony Pickering, 94, who flew on the ‘Hardest Day’. He said: ‘I don’t think I was ever afraid. You’ve got to make sure you don’t get too enthusiastic. You couldn’t take on the German air force by yourself.’
At one point it appeared as if one Hurricane had caught fire on the ground before it emerged that the flames from the exhaust is normal when Merlin engines are started.
The planes then split into three formations of eight – one group heading west, one east and the third making a flypast of the Battle of Britain Memorial on the cliffs of Dover.
The Battle of Britain started in July 1940 and continued until October at the cost of 1,023 Allied aircraft and 544 fighter pilots. The Luftwaffe lost 1,887 planes and 2,500 aircrew. Richard Grace, one of yesterday’s Spitfire pilots, said: ‘That so few people put in all the effort they had to defend this little island is truly magical.’