A brush with aviation history

Sir, – One evening during the early 1980s I was passing the aircraft museum at Strathallan, near Auchterarder.

This was a time when the ambitions of the Roberts family of Strathallan Castle and estates to establish an aviation museum in Perthshire, housing famous wartime aircraft, was bearing fruit and one of the prized exhibits was a Lancaster bomber.

On this evening, under a clear sky and a rising moon, the Lancaster looked defiantly unique and almost mysterious, silhouetted in the moonlight as I stood and surveyed the scene.

It is an image that comes readily to mind as this month, May 16, brings the anniversary of the most famous event of many in the history of Bomber Command – the Dambusters raid in 1943.

The brave men of 617 squadron would have seen the same scene as I did, standing on a narrow Perthshire road, as shadows fell on their surrounding bomber base and the waiting Lancasters were widely dispersed.

Strathallan aircraft museum is a memory, but one that lives on.

I have reached it by both road and air but come May 16, the anniversary of the famous raid, I will think of that lone Lancaster at peace in a Strathearn airfield.

Thomas Brown. Garry Place, Bankfoot.