IN A gesture that recalls the young Battle of Britain heroes who defended this country during the Second World War, Prince Harry has taken to the skies in the cockpit of a vintage Spitfire fighter plane.
Video footage released last night shows the Prince giving a thumbs-up as he flies upside down with a co-pilot above the Channel in the plane that has become synonymous with Britain’s “finest hour”.
The clip was released to mark the Prince’s support for a scholarship programme to train wounded servicemen to fly. Two veterans of more recent campaigns have begun flight training to enable them to join a fly-past as part of the Battle of Britain 75th anniver- sary celebrations. Pte Nathan Forster, 27, who was badly injured by a bomb while serving in the Parachute Regiment in Afghanistan in 2011, and Cpl Alan Robinson, 36, who lost a leg in a motorcycle accident the same year, will follow a similar training programme to that of their Forties predecessors.
After undertaking their first flights in a Tiger Moth at Boultbee Flight Academy, at Goodwood, West Sussex, they will move on to a Harvard, before getting to grips with a Spitfire – enabling them to join the anniversary fly-past across the south of England on Sept 15.
The event will see 35 Spitfires and Hurricanes from Britain, Europe and the US, flying in formation from Boul- tbee across those parts of the country that saw the fiercest aerial combat during the battle for Britain’s skies between July and October 1940. The struggle was summed up famously by Sir Winston Churchill: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
Pte Forster, from South Shields, has already learnt to fly a Microlight through the Flying for Freedom programme, with the backing of the Royal Foundation’s Endeavour Fund, but said flying a Spitfire would be the culmination of a dream.
Having crewed on sailing expeditions to the Arctic Circle, Greenland and the Caribbean, he said: “This scholarship has provided me with a new focus, purpose and drive that I have rarely felt since being injured in Afghanistan. It will provide me with the skills, confidence and experience to fulfil my aspiration to start a new career in aviation.”
Cpl Robinson, 36, from Market Rasen, Lincs, who currently serves as an aircraft technician with the RAF, said: “The Spitfire scholarship will fulfil a childhood dream. This incredible opportunity is both a privilege and an honour and something I hope to do with great respect, as I know this aircraft means so much to so many.”
The scholarship, which was launched by Prince Harry in February last year, with the support of the Endeavour Fund, was inspired by the example of Sir Douglas Bader, who flew throughout the Second World War. He notched up 20 individual aerial victories, despite losing both legs in 1931, when he crashed while attempting an aerobatic manoeuvre.
Prince Harry, who begins a secondment with Australian special forces this week, flew in the two-seater Spitfire G-ILDA, SM520, with Boultbee Flight Academy instructor Phil Odell, a former chief test pilot for Rolls-Royce.
The Prince and Mr Odell flew out over the Channel and above the Needles off the Isle of Wight, with the Prince – who served in Afghanistan as an Apache helicopter pilot between September 2012 and January 2013 – taking the controls at various points. Rolling the plane over to the right, Prince Harry could be heard shouting: “Whooooo, ooooh, ooooh… I’d love to see what my face was like”, before screaming in delight as Mr Odell takes over the controls for a backward roll. Landing at Goodwood after the 45-minute sortie, the Prince, clearly delighted with his first Spitfire flight, said: “All good things must come to an end. What an hour, my God.”
The G-ILDA’s own story is tinged with tragedy. She was built at the Vickers Armstrong Castle Bromwich plant, in 1944, before being delivered to 33 Maintenance Unit at RAF Lyneham, Wilts, in October that year. In 1948, she was sold to the South African Air Force and was discovered in a scrapyard in Cape Town in 1979. The battered plane was bought by Charles Church, who began work on restoring her, but he was killed when another Spitfire he was flying crashed in 1989. She was eventually restored to her former glory by Paul Portelli, the founder of World’s End Tiles. Mr Portelli died in 2007, missing out on the opportunity to watch GILDA’s first flight in 60 years when she took off from Thruxton, in Oct 2008.
Pte Forster and Corporal Robinson will be writing about their flight training on the website www.thespitfirescholarship.co.uk. Last month, proceeds from the sale of the Biggin Hill airfield scramble bell, which alerted Battle of Britain pilots and ground crew to attacks, were donated to the Spitfire Scholarship fund.