ianstone
08-19-2010, 08:24 AM
How the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight keeps spitfires and Lancasters in the air
By Angus Batey (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=y&authornamef=Angus+Batey+)
[/URL]
This Friday a Spitfire and a Hurricane will fly over London to mark the 70th anniversary of Churchill's 'The Few' speech. But the fact that these rare aircraft can still fly is only because of the tireless, painstaking work of the men of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/08/11/article-1302264-0AA9FE7E000005DC-762_634x286.jpg A Mk XIX Spitfire at the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight hanger in Lincolnshire, wearing the colour scheme of 81 squadron, which flew the last RAF Spitfire sortie in 1954
The Mk XIX Spitfire comes screaming through the skies. Banking to the left, the aircraft pulls up and swings around for another pass. It swoops down again, tearing fast and low above the heads of a small crowd gathered at the edge of the RAF base at Coningsby in Lincolnshire. A row of Typhoon jets - the supersonic fighters that head up the RAF's fleet - sit waiting for their pilots. But all eyes are on the Spitfire, as the Rolls-Royce Griffon engine's throaty growl echoes around the base.
'If you're flying a Spitfire, you don't get into it - you put it on, and you become part of it. It's just such a beautiful aeroplane to fly, and it's so easy to fly beautifully,' says Squadron Leader Ian Smith, commanding officer of the RAF's Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (BBMF). Smith is an airman who has been in the service for 27 years. He has flown Jaguar jets over Iraq and Bosnia, Chinook helicopters in the Falklands, and completed a stint with the Red Arrows.
The crowning moment for him, though, came earlier this summer when he flew the BBMF's Mk II Spitfire - the only Spitfire still flying anywhere in the world that saw action in the Battle of Britain - over Buckingham Palace in the Queen's birthday fly-past.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/08/11/article-1302264-002F23B700000258-643_634x369.jpg Spitfire pilots scramble during the Battle of Britain, 1940
But there's more to the BBMF than rewarding long-serving pilots with a chance to take a spin in some big boys' toys. As well as preserving a fleet of priceless aircraft and keeping them in tip-top flying condition, the Flight exists to remind the nation of the achievements and sacrifices that ensured our freedom, and to underline the links between the heroes of World War II and today's generation of servicemen and women.
While RAF squadrons will generally only have one type of aircraft, the BBMF operates five - as well as the fighters that won the Battle of Britain, the Spitfire and the Hurricane, it has two Chipmunk trainer aircraft, a Dakota transport plane and one of only two Lancaster bombers still flying anywhere in the world (the other is in Canada). The number of people involved is small - there are only 26 full-time ground crew, working out at roughly two per plane, whereas across the Tarmac, the Typhoons of Coningsby's front-line squadrons have ten or 11 each. And many personnel - including all pilots, apart from Smith - are volunteers.
'The BBMF costs between £2.5 and £3 million to run, so you can get three of us for one Jonathan Ross,' says Squadron Leader Jeff Hesketh, who completed the last of his seven years as a volunteer Lancaster navigator last year, and retires from the RAF this month.
'We're a museum without walls, and we bring the sight and sound of the aircraft to as many people as we can.'
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/08/11/article-1302264-0AC40C40000005DC-985_634x338.jpg The only remaining flying Lancaster in the UK during a Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (BBMF) flight
It has its practical side, says Flight Sergeant Dick Chaffey - engineers who've done a tour with the Flight often go back to a modern squadron with an increased range of abilities.
'When you come from the modern jets, you get what we call Black Box Syndrome,' he explains.
'You plug a computer in and the aeroplane virtually tells you what's wrong, then you take the bit off and send it away, and replace it like for like. The new guys who come here haven't spent time in their dads' garages working on the car: dads don't do that nowadays, because cars are so complicated. So we teach them the basics, to give them the full understanding of the aircraft, and when they leave here they're proper mechanics, proper engineers.'
In the BBMF's hangar, the evidence of the care and attention the engineers show is clear. In one bay a cluster of spare Merlin engines, which power Spitfires, the Lancaster and the Hurricanes, sit under protective covers. The place is as spotless and orderly as a library.
But it's not just about maintenance: in another bay, a rare Mk XVI Spitfire is being rebuilt. Its return to the skies is being led by Chief Technician Paul Blackah, a former RAF staffer and now a full-time reservist, whose knowledge of World War II aircraft is so thorough he has co-authored a series of Haynes manuals on them. (The first, on the Spitfire, was expected to shift a few thousand copies - sales now stand at over 40,000.)
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/08/11/article-1302264-0AC40C30000005DC-215_634x367.jpg Colin Cole, a Lancaster wireless operator in 617 Squadron who took part in the sinking of the Tirpitz
The plan was to piece together one 'new' Spitfire from the best parts of each. It's taken years, partly because, until a couple of years ago when the aircraft was re-registered as an RAF machine, Blackah and two colleagues could only work on it during lunch and tea breaks. But the BBMF could do with the extra plane.
Each aircraft has a strictly limited number of hours it's allowed to fly each year - 100 for the Lancaster, and only 50 each for the Spitfires and Hurricanes - to ensure their flying lives are as prolonged as possible.
'We've maintained the same hours that we had ten years ago,' explains Flight Lieutenant Jack Hawkins, another full-time reservist who's responsible for planning the flying programme. 'But the workload has gone up almost 15 times. Each sortie that an aircraft does involves seven or eight fly-pasts.'
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/08/11/article-1302264-0AC40C5D000005DC-478_306x423.jpg The mid-upper turret, one of the three gun turrets in the Lancaster (the man occupying this position had one of the most terrifying roles on board - he stood to be picked off by Messerschmitts or attacked from below)
As well as getting the aircraft from Coningsby to all the air shows and back again, those flying hours also have to include training.
'I started training for this last October,' says Flight Lieutenant Mark Pearce, a Typhoon pilot with more than 1,500 hours' experience in jet fighters who's in his first year with the BBMF.
'Before you get into the Hurricane or Spitfire, you need to train on tail-draggers - aeroplanes with two main wheels at the front and a tail wheel at the back. You can't see immediately forward as you land, so you land using your peripheral vision, looking out the side. Doing that in the Chipmunk teaches you the skill.'
For every aircraft a new BBMF pilot has to endure the unnerving experience of stalling - flying so slowly that the wings no longer produce enough lift - so he'll recognise the signs and be able to take appropriate action if it ever happens unintentionally. It's an important lesson for experienced Typhoon pilots, whose aircraft have computers that take over before a stall occurs.
The aircraft that dominates the hangar is the Lancaster. While the Hurricane racked up the most kills during the Battle of Britain, and the Spitfire became the symbol of British defiance to Nazi invasion plans, it was the Lancaster, which entered service in 1942, that arguably played the biggest part in winning the war. Some 7,377 Lancasters were built, but over 3,500 of them were destroyed in action.
Each one had a crew of seven; and more than 55,000 members of Bomber Command's aircrews never made it home. The planes would fly ten-hour missions under cover of darkness, with the crew having no better than a one-in-three chance of completing a tour of duty.
Their bravery was beyond question, but their mission, as much about terrifying the German population as destroying the Nazi war machine, was controversial. The exploits of 617 Squadron, including the Dam Busters raid of 1943, became the stuff of WWII folklore, but most of the aircraft that did survive were scrapped, and the air and ground crews were never awarded a campaign medal.
Yet in Lincolnshire, where most of the bombers flew from, the 55,000 have never been forgotten. And the Lancaster remained a potent symbol of wartime courage and sacrifice. In 1973, the Lincolnshire Lancaster Association was formed, with the objective of keeping the last flying Lancaster in the county. Today the Association has more than 6,000 members, and is the largest outside donor to the BBMF.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/08/11/article-1302264-0AC40C4A000005DC-231_634x369.jpg The BBMF's Mk II Battle of Britain Spitfire with a Typhoon at Biggin Hill
Its chairman, Stuart Stephenson, understands the spell the big bomber casts over people.
'It's not just the sight; it's the sound,' he says of the four-Merlin-engined machine. 'A Spitfire does it a little bit, but it's only a quarter as good as one of these. It does have a magic. It's an orchestra in the sky, playing a symphony. And it does provoke an emotional response.'
One problem Hawkins and his planners have to take into account is that the Lancaster isn't permitted to fly parallel to motorways or main roads, but must cross straight over them. The aircraft nowadays flies no higher than 1,000ft, and it's liable to cause accidents as drivers stare at it rather than at the road.
Inside, the Lancaster is cramped and busy.
'They were built to carry bombs and to drop bombs,' says Colin Cole, the cheery secretary of the Lincolnshire Lancaster Association, and a wireless operator in 617 Squadron. 'The crew just sat in where they could.'
'We always talk about The Few,' says Squadron Leader Stuart Reid, a Lancaster pilot and BBMF volunteer. 'There's a little plaque on the side of the Lancaster, just to the left of the main door, which says, "To remember the many", and that says it all, really.'
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/08/11/article-1302264-0AC40C63000005DC-916_634x371.jpg A BBMF crewman maintains a Spitfire
The Flight is operating at full capacity in this 70th anniversary year, with almost 800 events this summer, including this Friday's fly-past in London following a re-enactment of Sir Winston Churchill's famous speech about 'The Few'. But with a wide-ranging review of MoD spending due to be published in October, questions are bound to be raised about its future.
'It's my job to ensure that we do the job as professionally as we can and that we're value for money,' says Squadron Leader Smith.
'But there are a lot of people out there who would see a Lancaster, a Spitfire or a Hurricane and recognise it, but probably wouldn't understand it was an RAF plane, owned and paid for by them as taxpayers, or understand why it was flying around. So I want to get into the psyche of every man, woman and child in Great Britain, so they know who we are, what we are, what we do and why we do it.'
Visit bbmf.co.uk
Read more: [URL]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1302264/How-Battle-Britain-Memorial-Flight-keeps-spitfires-Lancasters-air.html#ixzz0x3P3dwcY (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1302264/How-Battle-Britain-Memorial-Flight-keeps-spitfires-Lancasters-air.html)
By Angus Batey (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=y&authornamef=Angus+Batey+)
[/URL]
This Friday a Spitfire and a Hurricane will fly over London to mark the 70th anniversary of Churchill's 'The Few' speech. But the fact that these rare aircraft can still fly is only because of the tireless, painstaking work of the men of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/08/11/article-1302264-0AA9FE7E000005DC-762_634x286.jpg A Mk XIX Spitfire at the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight hanger in Lincolnshire, wearing the colour scheme of 81 squadron, which flew the last RAF Spitfire sortie in 1954
The Mk XIX Spitfire comes screaming through the skies. Banking to the left, the aircraft pulls up and swings around for another pass. It swoops down again, tearing fast and low above the heads of a small crowd gathered at the edge of the RAF base at Coningsby in Lincolnshire. A row of Typhoon jets - the supersonic fighters that head up the RAF's fleet - sit waiting for their pilots. But all eyes are on the Spitfire, as the Rolls-Royce Griffon engine's throaty growl echoes around the base.
'If you're flying a Spitfire, you don't get into it - you put it on, and you become part of it. It's just such a beautiful aeroplane to fly, and it's so easy to fly beautifully,' says Squadron Leader Ian Smith, commanding officer of the RAF's Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (BBMF). Smith is an airman who has been in the service for 27 years. He has flown Jaguar jets over Iraq and Bosnia, Chinook helicopters in the Falklands, and completed a stint with the Red Arrows.
The crowning moment for him, though, came earlier this summer when he flew the BBMF's Mk II Spitfire - the only Spitfire still flying anywhere in the world that saw action in the Battle of Britain - over Buckingham Palace in the Queen's birthday fly-past.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/08/11/article-1302264-002F23B700000258-643_634x369.jpg Spitfire pilots scramble during the Battle of Britain, 1940
But there's more to the BBMF than rewarding long-serving pilots with a chance to take a spin in some big boys' toys. As well as preserving a fleet of priceless aircraft and keeping them in tip-top flying condition, the Flight exists to remind the nation of the achievements and sacrifices that ensured our freedom, and to underline the links between the heroes of World War II and today's generation of servicemen and women.
While RAF squadrons will generally only have one type of aircraft, the BBMF operates five - as well as the fighters that won the Battle of Britain, the Spitfire and the Hurricane, it has two Chipmunk trainer aircraft, a Dakota transport plane and one of only two Lancaster bombers still flying anywhere in the world (the other is in Canada). The number of people involved is small - there are only 26 full-time ground crew, working out at roughly two per plane, whereas across the Tarmac, the Typhoons of Coningsby's front-line squadrons have ten or 11 each. And many personnel - including all pilots, apart from Smith - are volunteers.
'The BBMF costs between £2.5 and £3 million to run, so you can get three of us for one Jonathan Ross,' says Squadron Leader Jeff Hesketh, who completed the last of his seven years as a volunteer Lancaster navigator last year, and retires from the RAF this month.
'We're a museum without walls, and we bring the sight and sound of the aircraft to as many people as we can.'
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/08/11/article-1302264-0AC40C40000005DC-985_634x338.jpg The only remaining flying Lancaster in the UK during a Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (BBMF) flight
It has its practical side, says Flight Sergeant Dick Chaffey - engineers who've done a tour with the Flight often go back to a modern squadron with an increased range of abilities.
'When you come from the modern jets, you get what we call Black Box Syndrome,' he explains.
'You plug a computer in and the aeroplane virtually tells you what's wrong, then you take the bit off and send it away, and replace it like for like. The new guys who come here haven't spent time in their dads' garages working on the car: dads don't do that nowadays, because cars are so complicated. So we teach them the basics, to give them the full understanding of the aircraft, and when they leave here they're proper mechanics, proper engineers.'
In the BBMF's hangar, the evidence of the care and attention the engineers show is clear. In one bay a cluster of spare Merlin engines, which power Spitfires, the Lancaster and the Hurricanes, sit under protective covers. The place is as spotless and orderly as a library.
But it's not just about maintenance: in another bay, a rare Mk XVI Spitfire is being rebuilt. Its return to the skies is being led by Chief Technician Paul Blackah, a former RAF staffer and now a full-time reservist, whose knowledge of World War II aircraft is so thorough he has co-authored a series of Haynes manuals on them. (The first, on the Spitfire, was expected to shift a few thousand copies - sales now stand at over 40,000.)
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/08/11/article-1302264-0AC40C30000005DC-215_634x367.jpg Colin Cole, a Lancaster wireless operator in 617 Squadron who took part in the sinking of the Tirpitz
The plan was to piece together one 'new' Spitfire from the best parts of each. It's taken years, partly because, until a couple of years ago when the aircraft was re-registered as an RAF machine, Blackah and two colleagues could only work on it during lunch and tea breaks. But the BBMF could do with the extra plane.
Each aircraft has a strictly limited number of hours it's allowed to fly each year - 100 for the Lancaster, and only 50 each for the Spitfires and Hurricanes - to ensure their flying lives are as prolonged as possible.
'We've maintained the same hours that we had ten years ago,' explains Flight Lieutenant Jack Hawkins, another full-time reservist who's responsible for planning the flying programme. 'But the workload has gone up almost 15 times. Each sortie that an aircraft does involves seven or eight fly-pasts.'
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/08/11/article-1302264-0AC40C5D000005DC-478_306x423.jpg The mid-upper turret, one of the three gun turrets in the Lancaster (the man occupying this position had one of the most terrifying roles on board - he stood to be picked off by Messerschmitts or attacked from below)
As well as getting the aircraft from Coningsby to all the air shows and back again, those flying hours also have to include training.
'I started training for this last October,' says Flight Lieutenant Mark Pearce, a Typhoon pilot with more than 1,500 hours' experience in jet fighters who's in his first year with the BBMF.
'Before you get into the Hurricane or Spitfire, you need to train on tail-draggers - aeroplanes with two main wheels at the front and a tail wheel at the back. You can't see immediately forward as you land, so you land using your peripheral vision, looking out the side. Doing that in the Chipmunk teaches you the skill.'
For every aircraft a new BBMF pilot has to endure the unnerving experience of stalling - flying so slowly that the wings no longer produce enough lift - so he'll recognise the signs and be able to take appropriate action if it ever happens unintentionally. It's an important lesson for experienced Typhoon pilots, whose aircraft have computers that take over before a stall occurs.
The aircraft that dominates the hangar is the Lancaster. While the Hurricane racked up the most kills during the Battle of Britain, and the Spitfire became the symbol of British defiance to Nazi invasion plans, it was the Lancaster, which entered service in 1942, that arguably played the biggest part in winning the war. Some 7,377 Lancasters were built, but over 3,500 of them were destroyed in action.
Each one had a crew of seven; and more than 55,000 members of Bomber Command's aircrews never made it home. The planes would fly ten-hour missions under cover of darkness, with the crew having no better than a one-in-three chance of completing a tour of duty.
Their bravery was beyond question, but their mission, as much about terrifying the German population as destroying the Nazi war machine, was controversial. The exploits of 617 Squadron, including the Dam Busters raid of 1943, became the stuff of WWII folklore, but most of the aircraft that did survive were scrapped, and the air and ground crews were never awarded a campaign medal.
Yet in Lincolnshire, where most of the bombers flew from, the 55,000 have never been forgotten. And the Lancaster remained a potent symbol of wartime courage and sacrifice. In 1973, the Lincolnshire Lancaster Association was formed, with the objective of keeping the last flying Lancaster in the county. Today the Association has more than 6,000 members, and is the largest outside donor to the BBMF.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/08/11/article-1302264-0AC40C4A000005DC-231_634x369.jpg The BBMF's Mk II Battle of Britain Spitfire with a Typhoon at Biggin Hill
Its chairman, Stuart Stephenson, understands the spell the big bomber casts over people.
'It's not just the sight; it's the sound,' he says of the four-Merlin-engined machine. 'A Spitfire does it a little bit, but it's only a quarter as good as one of these. It does have a magic. It's an orchestra in the sky, playing a symphony. And it does provoke an emotional response.'
One problem Hawkins and his planners have to take into account is that the Lancaster isn't permitted to fly parallel to motorways or main roads, but must cross straight over them. The aircraft nowadays flies no higher than 1,000ft, and it's liable to cause accidents as drivers stare at it rather than at the road.
Inside, the Lancaster is cramped and busy.
'They were built to carry bombs and to drop bombs,' says Colin Cole, the cheery secretary of the Lincolnshire Lancaster Association, and a wireless operator in 617 Squadron. 'The crew just sat in where they could.'
'We always talk about The Few,' says Squadron Leader Stuart Reid, a Lancaster pilot and BBMF volunteer. 'There's a little plaque on the side of the Lancaster, just to the left of the main door, which says, "To remember the many", and that says it all, really.'
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/08/11/article-1302264-0AC40C63000005DC-916_634x371.jpg A BBMF crewman maintains a Spitfire
The Flight is operating at full capacity in this 70th anniversary year, with almost 800 events this summer, including this Friday's fly-past in London following a re-enactment of Sir Winston Churchill's famous speech about 'The Few'. But with a wide-ranging review of MoD spending due to be published in October, questions are bound to be raised about its future.
'It's my job to ensure that we do the job as professionally as we can and that we're value for money,' says Squadron Leader Smith.
'But there are a lot of people out there who would see a Lancaster, a Spitfire or a Hurricane and recognise it, but probably wouldn't understand it was an RAF plane, owned and paid for by them as taxpayers, or understand why it was flying around. So I want to get into the psyche of every man, woman and child in Great Britain, so they know who we are, what we are, what we do and why we do it.'
Visit bbmf.co.uk
Read more: [URL]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1302264/How-Battle-Britain-Memorial-Flight-keeps-spitfires-Lancasters-air.html#ixzz0x3P3dwcY (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1302264/How-Battle-Britain-Memorial-Flight-keeps-spitfires-Lancasters-air.html)