Memorial flight: Aircraft named after wartime heroes

RAF cadets Ben Hunter and Joel Pilkington check over an Aquila aircraft newly dedicated to a wartime airman with instructor Gareth Hutchison at Tayside Aviation in Dundee. Spirit of Sir Alasdair commemorates Alasdair Macrobert, with other planes being named after his brothers Roderic and Iain, who all died in action in their mid-20s. A fourth aircraft at the RAF Flying Scholarships school, which trains some 200 cadets a year, commemorates Sergeant Donald Jeffs, who died in 2017 aged 98. He survived a crash in a memorial plane commissioned by the men’s mother, Lady Rachel Workman Macrobert, in 1941.