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We're talking about being British, aren't we? | 0:00:03 | 0:00:06 | |
What really matters to us. | 0:00:06 | 0:00:09 | |
Fair play, roast beef, the Queen? | 0:00:09 | 0:00:12 | |
Yeah, OK. | 0:00:12 | 0:00:13 | |
But I'd like to nominate something quite different, | 0:00:13 | 0:00:16 | |
something I've loved all my life and it's celebrating its 75th birthday. | 0:00:16 | 0:00:21 | |
It's the most wonderful... | 0:00:21 | 0:00:24 | |
the most beautiful... | 0:00:24 | 0:00:26 | |
greatest... | 0:00:26 | 0:00:28 | |
aircraft in the world. | 0:00:28 | 0:00:30 | |
It is, of course, the Spitfire. | 0:00:30 | 0:00:32 | |
Oh, gosh! A victory roll. | 0:00:32 | 0:00:35 | |
But our story isn't just about a plane, it's about people - | 0:00:35 | 0:00:40 | |
the men and women who've loved this thing for three-quarters of a century. | 0:00:40 | 0:00:44 | |
It was the nearest thing to flying oneself. | 0:00:44 | 0:00:47 | |
You went into combat daily with it together. | 0:00:47 | 0:00:50 | |
The people who gave the Spitfire its soul. | 0:00:50 | 0:00:54 | |
My Spitfire and me. | 0:00:54 | 0:00:56 | |
Ordinary people who did the most extraordinary things. | 0:00:56 | 0:01:01 | |
Anything that moved, short of a horse, was an enemy. | 0:01:01 | 0:01:04 | |
You would have done the same. | 0:01:04 | 0:01:06 | |
First you hear it, then you feel it. | 0:01:06 | 0:01:10 | |
-ENGINE ROARS -It's so exciting. | 0:01:10 | 0:01:12 | |
And does it matter if it's British? | 0:01:13 | 0:01:16 | |
Of course it does! | 0:01:16 | 0:01:19 | |
I've come here to meet a legend - a British dream machine | 0:01:38 | 0:01:42 | |
built by a golden generation. | 0:01:42 | 0:01:47 | |
It was going to be called the Shrew. | 0:01:47 | 0:01:50 | |
I'm so glad it wasn't. | 0:01:50 | 0:01:52 | |
Are you ready? | 0:01:52 | 0:01:53 | |
Fantastic! | 0:01:57 | 0:02:00 | |
There it is, the Spitfire, | 0:02:02 | 0:02:04 | |
surely the most beautiful British plane ever built. | 0:02:04 | 0:02:10 | |
The Spitfire looks so beautiful | 0:02:23 | 0:02:26 | |
because it was designed for a purpose, a brutal purpose. | 0:02:26 | 0:02:30 | |
GUNFIRE | 0:02:30 | 0:02:34 | |
Brutal and absolutely straightforward and horrible. | 0:02:34 | 0:02:38 | |
It had to go at great speed... | 0:02:38 | 0:02:41 | |
..and then bring all the force of its machine guns | 0:02:42 | 0:02:45 | |
and cannon onto the enemy aircraft. | 0:02:45 | 0:02:47 | |
GUNFIRE | 0:02:47 | 0:02:49 | |
The key point about the Spitfire, as far as I'm concerned, | 0:02:49 | 0:02:52 | |
is it's got this absolute purity of design. | 0:02:52 | 0:02:57 | |
And that's why it's so beautiful. | 0:02:57 | 0:03:00 | |
But beauty is only skin deep. | 0:03:00 | 0:03:02 | |
I want to get to the heart of the Spitfire story, | 0:03:02 | 0:03:07 | |
and this particular Mark IX Spitfire is going to be my guide. | 0:03:07 | 0:03:12 | |
I want to tell the story about this particular Spitfire, the MH434. | 0:03:12 | 0:03:18 | |
What did it do in the war? | 0:03:18 | 0:03:20 | |
Where did it fly to? | 0:03:20 | 0:03:22 | |
And who flew it? | 0:03:22 | 0:03:24 | |
And what about all those people | 0:03:24 | 0:03:27 | |
whose lives were changed by this Spitfire, | 0:03:27 | 0:03:30 | |
the tens of thousands of people, | 0:03:30 | 0:03:33 | |
who not only liked this plane, they loved it? | 0:03:33 | 0:03:36 | |
Now for the really good bit. | 0:03:44 | 0:03:48 | |
We're going to see it fly. | 0:03:48 | 0:03:49 | |
Unfortunately, MH434 has only got room for the pilot. | 0:03:49 | 0:03:55 | |
But don't worry, we're going to be up close and personal | 0:03:55 | 0:03:59 | |
seeing the Spitfire in its natural habitat in the sky. | 0:03:59 | 0:04:03 | |
I'm going to be cruising alongside in formation | 0:04:03 | 0:04:06 | |
for the flight of my life. | 0:04:06 | 0:04:08 | |
-Want a hand? -Yes, please. | 0:04:10 | 0:04:12 | |
-JOHN LAUGHS -All right, I'll give it a push. | 0:04:12 | 0:04:15 | |
I shouldn't be pushing on that, though, should I? | 0:04:15 | 0:04:17 | |
'It might weigh more than three tons but pushing it is a joy, | 0:04:17 | 0:04:20 | |
'and soon we'll be firing up the famous Merlin engine on MH434 one more time. | 0:04:20 | 0:04:27 | |
'A top class commercial pilot, | 0:04:27 | 0:04:29 | |
'Paul Bonhomme, will have the privilege of flying the Spitfire, | 0:04:29 | 0:04:32 | |
'and I'll be in the safe hands of Bill Giles who will fly me in his Aztec. | 0:04:32 | 0:04:38 | |
'I've been really looking forward to this.' | 0:04:38 | 0:04:41 | |
-See you later. -All right, Paul, have a good one. | 0:04:41 | 0:04:43 | |
I learnt to fly in a plane like this when I was an RAF Cadet. | 0:04:43 | 0:04:48 | |
I was called Flight Sergeant Sergeant, if you want to know. | 0:04:48 | 0:04:53 | |
Could I fly one of these things now? | 0:04:53 | 0:04:55 | |
Only if things go wrong. | 0:04:55 | 0:04:57 | |
Hello, Bill, are you all right? | 0:04:57 | 0:04:59 | |
Right, get cracking. | 0:05:02 | 0:05:04 | |
'Prepare for a great journey into the past. | 0:05:09 | 0:05:13 | |
'We're going back to Spitfire Britain, | 0:05:13 | 0:05:16 | |
'following the story of one plane, our plane, | 0:05:16 | 0:05:20 | |
'MH434, as it roars back to some of its wartime haunts.' | 0:05:20 | 0:05:26 | |
First, we're heading west to the Castle Bromwich factory | 0:05:26 | 0:05:30 | |
where our plane was built in 1943. | 0:05:30 | 0:05:33 | |
Then we're off to Hornchurch in Essex | 0:05:33 | 0:05:35 | |
where MH434 took off over 90 times | 0:05:35 | 0:05:39 | |
to defend Britain against the Luftwaffe. | 0:05:39 | 0:05:43 | |
We'll soar over parts of the most stunning coastline | 0:05:43 | 0:05:48 | |
to revisit this Spitfire's battlefield in the sky. | 0:05:48 | 0:05:51 | |
And, best of all, we'll be meeting some incredible people, | 0:05:51 | 0:05:56 | |
the few remaining voices from Generation Spitfire. | 0:05:56 | 0:06:01 | |
ARCHIVE COMMENTARY: 'Having got our pilot into his seat | 0:06:06 | 0:06:09 | |
'complete with cap, goggles and the rest of the outfit, | 0:06:09 | 0:06:13 | |
'we have got to lash him in there so that he will not fall out. | 0:06:13 | 0:06:17 | |
'Wouldn't you hate to be in a strait waistcoat of this kind?' | 0:06:17 | 0:06:20 | |
More than 20,000 of these iconic planes took off from British bases | 0:06:25 | 0:06:30 | |
during the Second World War. | 0:06:30 | 0:06:32 | |
Pilots as young as 19 flew several missions a day | 0:06:32 | 0:06:36 | |
and during the darkest days of the war, | 0:06:36 | 0:06:39 | |
one in five of them didn't make it back. | 0:06:39 | 0:06:43 | |
ARCHIVE COMMENTARY: 'Now the takeoff. | 0:06:47 | 0:06:50 | |
'Throttle right forward, stick central, | 0:06:50 | 0:06:53 | |
'ease her off the ground, | 0:06:53 | 0:06:55 | |
'back with the throttle to normal boost.' | 0:06:55 | 0:06:58 | |
MUSIC: "Wake Up" by Arcade Fire | 0:07:02 | 0:07:05 | |
Oh, I can see her now. | 0:07:16 | 0:07:17 | |
Wow, that is something, isn't it? | 0:07:20 | 0:07:24 | |
And it looks surprisingly menacing. | 0:07:24 | 0:07:27 | |
It looks like there's a shark with wings on. | 0:07:32 | 0:07:35 | |
Blimey! | 0:07:35 | 0:07:36 | |
Oh, it looks terrific, it really does. | 0:07:38 | 0:07:40 | |
John, are you enjoying your trip? | 0:07:40 | 0:07:43 | |
Absolutely fantastic. You look marvellous. | 0:07:43 | 0:07:46 | |
I don't mean you personally, but you and the plane. | 0:07:46 | 0:07:49 | |
Well, I think I'm just a spare part. It's the aeroplane is the best bit. | 0:07:49 | 0:07:53 | |
This is what it would be like if you were in a Messerschmitt | 0:07:53 | 0:07:57 | |
and a Spitfire started to come in and attack you. | 0:07:57 | 0:08:01 | |
I can't see anything now. I think I'd have been shot down if this was real life! | 0:08:03 | 0:08:07 | |
I can't see him. | 0:08:07 | 0:08:09 | |
Where is he? | 0:08:09 | 0:08:11 | |
Where is that Spitfire? I'm sure he was somewhere. | 0:08:11 | 0:08:13 | |
Here we go. Ooh, gosh! | 0:08:27 | 0:08:29 | |
Oh, yes! Right. | 0:08:31 | 0:08:33 | |
He swept right past us. | 0:08:33 | 0:08:35 | |
Fantastic. Now, he could have riddled us with bullets. | 0:08:35 | 0:08:38 | |
I bet he would have wanted to, but we're trying to say no to that. | 0:08:38 | 0:08:42 | |
But isn't that wonderful? | 0:08:42 | 0:08:44 | |
That's where you want to see a Spitfire, don't you? | 0:08:46 | 0:08:48 | |
In the sky, not on the ground, not in some museum, | 0:08:48 | 0:08:52 | |
flying there in the sky where it should do. | 0:08:52 | 0:08:56 | |
It might look old-fashioned now | 0:08:56 | 0:08:58 | |
but the Spitfire was the very latest in the Second World War, | 0:08:58 | 0:09:01 | |
and our model, the Mark IX, was the best of the lot. | 0:09:01 | 0:09:05 | |
Its top speed was over 400 miles an hour. | 0:09:05 | 0:09:08 | |
It could operate at higher than 40,000 feet. | 0:09:08 | 0:09:11 | |
Its two 20-millimetre cannons and four machine guns were fierce enough | 0:09:11 | 0:09:15 | |
to bring down the mightiest planes in the Luftwaffe's arsenal. | 0:09:15 | 0:09:19 | |
The stakes couldn't have been higher. | 0:09:19 | 0:09:21 | |
Tens of thousands of British civilians | 0:09:21 | 0:09:23 | |
and hundreds of fighter pilots were killed during the war. | 0:09:23 | 0:09:27 | |
And it wasn't only the RAF who believed in the Spitfire. | 0:09:31 | 0:09:34 | |
It was flown by nearly all Allied air forces. | 0:09:34 | 0:09:38 | |
Hello, Paul, it's John Sergeant here. | 0:09:39 | 0:09:41 | |
-Well done, brilliant flying. -Thanks, John. | 0:09:41 | 0:09:45 | |
Do you think we're a bit old-fashioned or do you think, | 0:09:45 | 0:09:48 | |
you know, you're the old-fashioned plane? | 0:09:48 | 0:09:52 | |
No, this is a beautiful machine. | 0:09:52 | 0:09:54 | |
It's... As I've said before, it's a work of art | 0:09:54 | 0:09:57 | |
and flying very well. | 0:09:57 | 0:09:59 | |
Right, Paul, we're not too far from Birmingham now where we want to be. | 0:10:02 | 0:10:06 | |
'It's so easy to get caught up in the excitement this plane generates. | 0:10:06 | 0:10:11 | |
'But as the West Midlands spread out below us, | 0:10:11 | 0:10:13 | |
'it's time to re-engage with our mission.' | 0:10:13 | 0:10:16 | |
We're now right over the factory at Castle Bromwich | 0:10:16 | 0:10:19 | |
that produced half the Spitfires in the war. | 0:10:19 | 0:10:22 | |
But on 13th August 1943, | 0:10:22 | 0:10:27 | |
one particular Spitfire was built there, and that's ours, the MH434. | 0:10:27 | 0:10:33 | |
So it's a great homecoming. | 0:10:33 | 0:10:35 | |
During the Second World War, the most important Spitfire factory | 0:10:44 | 0:10:48 | |
in the country was here at Castle Bromwich. | 0:10:48 | 0:10:51 | |
And one man can remember actually building the plant. | 0:10:51 | 0:10:54 | |
His name is Eddie Fox. | 0:10:54 | 0:10:57 | |
Our job as engineers was to build... make and build production lines | 0:10:57 | 0:11:03 | |
so that you can make Spitfire aircraft. | 0:11:03 | 0:11:06 | |
-You're going to show me round, are you? -Yeah. | 0:11:06 | 0:11:09 | |
Today, this is a state-of-the-art car factory. | 0:11:09 | 0:11:12 | |
When Eddie arrived here for the first time, over 70 years ago, | 0:11:12 | 0:11:16 | |
it was an empty shell, but he and his team soon created | 0:11:16 | 0:11:19 | |
an efficient production line. | 0:11:19 | 0:11:21 | |
When MH434 was built in August 1943, | 0:11:21 | 0:11:25 | |
it was one of 300 Spitfires completed that month. | 0:11:25 | 0:11:29 | |
Not bad for a man in his early twenties. | 0:11:29 | 0:11:34 | |
How many Spitfires altogether did you end up building here? | 0:11:34 | 0:11:38 | |
I think it was about 12,000. | 0:11:38 | 0:11:41 | |
-And that's more than any other factory in the country. -Oh, yes. | 0:11:41 | 0:11:45 | |
What was it like when you produced | 0:11:45 | 0:11:47 | |
the very first Spitfire from this plant? | 0:11:47 | 0:11:49 | |
It went out through the big hangar doors | 0:11:49 | 0:11:51 | |
and we all stood and cheered and really... | 0:11:51 | 0:11:56 | |
patted ourselves on the back, if you like, | 0:11:56 | 0:11:58 | |
because we'd got one off. | 0:11:58 | 0:12:00 | |
Alex Henshaw, the test pilot, the chief test pilot, | 0:12:00 | 0:12:03 | |
-he gave us a display with that aircraft. -Oh, right. -God! | 0:12:03 | 0:12:07 | |
Talk about flying...low. | 0:12:07 | 0:12:11 | |
How he never took our heads off I don't know, you know, | 0:12:11 | 0:12:14 | |
but he really threw that Spitfire around. | 0:12:14 | 0:12:16 | |
And that also gave us a great, warm feeling | 0:12:16 | 0:12:19 | |
knowing that that was the first one that had come off the production line | 0:12:19 | 0:12:23 | |
and it did everything that Alex Henshaw wanted it to do. | 0:12:23 | 0:12:26 | |
By 1943, nearly 16,000 people were working round the clock here, | 0:12:29 | 0:12:34 | |
building Spitfires and other aircraft. | 0:12:34 | 0:12:37 | |
Nearly half of them were women. | 0:12:37 | 0:12:40 | |
With on-the-job training, and no shortage of work, | 0:12:40 | 0:12:43 | |
people flocked here. | 0:12:43 | 0:12:44 | |
Catherine Degregorio was just 16 | 0:12:44 | 0:12:47 | |
when she arrived from County Limerick in Ireland. | 0:12:47 | 0:12:51 | |
She was working in the tool room when MH434 was built. | 0:12:51 | 0:12:55 | |
Coming from a little village and then come over here to a big place | 0:12:58 | 0:13:02 | |
and to think you're going to build Spitfires... You can't... | 0:13:02 | 0:13:05 | |
I can't explain the feeling, you know. | 0:13:05 | 0:13:09 | |
You sort of think to yourself you're in a dream, it's not real, | 0:13:09 | 0:13:12 | |
it's not real, but, of course, it was real. | 0:13:12 | 0:13:14 | |
It was good, it was very good. | 0:13:14 | 0:13:16 | |
And the people were lovely. People that worked there | 0:13:16 | 0:13:19 | |
were all very cheerful | 0:13:19 | 0:13:21 | |
and carrying on, helping each other along. | 0:13:21 | 0:13:23 | |
It was such a delicate thing to sort of put all them bits together | 0:13:23 | 0:13:26 | |
and see what comes at the end of it. | 0:13:26 | 0:13:29 | |
Gave you a lift to think, "Ooh, I helped to build that." | 0:13:29 | 0:13:32 | |
It makes you feel quite proud to think we, you know, | 0:13:32 | 0:13:35 | |
we took part in it all, yes. | 0:13:35 | 0:13:37 | |
Catherine didn't think she was building a legend. | 0:13:37 | 0:13:40 | |
Nobody thought that. | 0:13:40 | 0:13:41 | |
But she knew that her work was vital. | 0:13:41 | 0:13:44 | |
She was determined to do her bit. | 0:13:44 | 0:13:46 | |
And that certainly deserves a salute from one of her planes. | 0:13:46 | 0:13:50 | |
Oh, yes! | 0:13:50 | 0:13:52 | |
Brilliant, Paul! Well done! | 0:13:52 | 0:13:54 | |
OK, Paul, that was amazing, wasn't it? | 0:13:58 | 0:14:00 | |
Going back, seeing the factory where your Spitfire was built. | 0:14:00 | 0:14:04 | |
It is nice to take the aeroplane home. | 0:14:04 | 0:14:06 | |
Eddie and Catherine's stories | 0:14:06 | 0:14:09 | |
show the passion people felt for their plane. | 0:14:09 | 0:14:11 | |
It's amazing how many people found themselves | 0:14:11 | 0:14:16 | |
caught up in the whole Spitfire story. | 0:14:16 | 0:14:18 | |
One of the people who lived here during the Second World War | 0:14:18 | 0:14:21 | |
was June Eastlake, and she was just a little girl | 0:14:21 | 0:14:25 | |
when her whole life was turned upside down by the war. | 0:14:25 | 0:14:29 | |
During the war, June's family lived | 0:14:31 | 0:14:33 | |
just a few miles from the factory at Castle Bromwich. | 0:14:33 | 0:14:38 | |
The Spitfire factory was one of the first factories targeted. | 0:14:38 | 0:14:42 | |
-So you remember it? -Yes, yes. | 0:14:42 | 0:14:44 | |
And what was it like? | 0:14:44 | 0:14:46 | |
Absolutely dreadful. | 0:14:46 | 0:14:48 | |
I wouldn't wish it on anyone. | 0:14:48 | 0:14:51 | |
The drone of the German aeroplanes, the sound of the bombs coming down. | 0:14:51 | 0:14:56 | |
Every time a plane came in or out, I used to shake. | 0:14:56 | 0:14:59 | |
How much did you understand of what was going on? | 0:14:59 | 0:15:02 | |
I can remember standing waiting our turn to be let out of the shelter, | 0:15:02 | 0:15:07 | |
and it looked as though the world was on fire. | 0:15:07 | 0:15:10 | |
AIR-RAID SIRENS WAIL | 0:15:10 | 0:15:13 | |
My dad was a fire watcher. | 0:15:13 | 0:15:16 | |
I've got the little card showing that he'd been trained in fire watching. | 0:15:16 | 0:15:20 | |
There were thousands and thousands of incendiary bombs dropped, | 0:15:20 | 0:15:24 | |
and, of course, they were there to put them out. | 0:15:24 | 0:15:26 | |
So he was fire watching, | 0:15:26 | 0:15:28 | |
and a landmine fell on the house next door. | 0:15:28 | 0:15:31 | |
And, erm... | 0:15:31 | 0:15:33 | |
..the house collapsed and buried my father. | 0:15:35 | 0:15:39 | |
I can remember coming up from the shelter in the morning. | 0:15:39 | 0:15:43 | |
We were taken round to where we lived, but of course, | 0:15:43 | 0:15:46 | |
before you got there you could see that everywhere was devastation. | 0:15:46 | 0:15:50 | |
And there was a tea wagon there, | 0:15:50 | 0:15:52 | |
manned by volunteers, | 0:15:52 | 0:15:55 | |
which was the normal thing where there'd been a big bomb dropped. | 0:15:55 | 0:15:59 | |
I heard this person say, | 0:15:59 | 0:16:00 | |
"Give this woman a cup of tea, she's just lost her husband." | 0:16:00 | 0:16:04 | |
And that's how we realised that dad had died in the raid. | 0:16:04 | 0:16:08 | |
But nobody told you directly? | 0:16:08 | 0:16:10 | |
-No, no, no. Never did. -They never did? | 0:16:10 | 0:16:13 | |
No, Mum didn't either. | 0:16:13 | 0:16:15 | |
We just knew it had happened. | 0:16:15 | 0:16:17 | |
But this was happening to not just us, | 0:16:17 | 0:16:19 | |
it was the norm, and you accepted it, strangely enough. | 0:16:19 | 0:16:23 | |
That's... What an extraordinary way of knowing something that would change your whole life. | 0:16:23 | 0:16:27 | |
My dad died on the 17th of May. | 0:16:27 | 0:16:31 | |
But March, two months before, we all went to the photographer's | 0:16:31 | 0:16:37 | |
in the city centre, and there was Mum and Dad and the four children. | 0:16:37 | 0:16:40 | |
We all had our photograph taken as a family group. | 0:16:40 | 0:16:43 | |
That's the photograph there. | 0:16:43 | 0:16:46 | |
Pass it over and I'll show you. | 0:16:46 | 0:16:48 | |
That's my dad. He was only 33. | 0:16:48 | 0:16:52 | |
So this is the last photograph? | 0:16:52 | 0:16:54 | |
It's the only photo, family photograph, we have. | 0:16:54 | 0:16:56 | |
Where are you? | 0:16:56 | 0:16:57 | |
I'm at the back with the sticky-out hair. | 0:16:57 | 0:17:00 | |
-Yeah. -I was eight. | 0:17:00 | 0:17:02 | |
I love that photograph. | 0:17:02 | 0:17:04 | |
I've got... I carry one with me, a small one in my purse. | 0:17:05 | 0:17:09 | |
-You carry it with you all the time? -Yes, it's in my purse, yes. -Yeah. | 0:17:09 | 0:17:14 | |
PROPELLERS DRONE | 0:17:14 | 0:17:16 | |
June's story gets to the heart of one of the main reasons we love the Spitfire. | 0:17:17 | 0:17:22 | |
It's a physical reminder of the sacrifices | 0:17:22 | 0:17:26 | |
people made during the war, the tragic side of the Spitfire story. | 0:17:26 | 0:17:30 | |
We're leaving the midlands now, just as MH434 did in 1943, | 0:17:31 | 0:17:37 | |
when it was delivered, by air, to RAF Hornchurch in Essex. | 0:17:37 | 0:17:43 | |
It was flown by one of the Air Transport Auxiliary, or ATA pilots. | 0:17:43 | 0:17:48 | |
They delivered more than 300,000 aircraft, | 0:17:48 | 0:17:51 | |
despite being unarmed and without radio communication. | 0:17:51 | 0:17:55 | |
They were sent to bases right across the country. | 0:17:55 | 0:17:59 | |
All of them were volunteers, and one in five of them were women, | 0:17:59 | 0:18:03 | |
among them a 20-year-old, Joy Lofthouse. | 0:18:03 | 0:18:06 | |
You ask anyone, of the single engines, which was their favourite, | 0:18:06 | 0:18:11 | |
and it would be a Spitfire. | 0:18:11 | 0:18:13 | |
I've heard someone say you only had to blow on the stick | 0:18:13 | 0:18:16 | |
and it did what you wanted. | 0:18:16 | 0:18:18 | |
It was the nearest thing to flying oneself. | 0:18:18 | 0:18:20 | |
It was almost as though the wings were part of you, | 0:18:20 | 0:18:23 | |
not part of the aeroplane. | 0:18:23 | 0:18:25 | |
I was 16-and-a-half when war broke out. | 0:18:25 | 0:18:28 | |
I'd never SEEN an aeroplane, leave alone been in one. | 0:18:28 | 0:18:31 | |
Several of my boyfriends said, "Oh, you're joining ATA. | 0:18:31 | 0:18:34 | |
"Are you going in as a driver or something?" | 0:18:34 | 0:18:37 | |
And I said, "No, they're teaching me to fly!" | 0:18:37 | 0:18:39 | |
And of course a lot of them didn't want to believe it | 0:18:39 | 0:18:42 | |
as I'd never been in an aeroplane before. | 0:18:42 | 0:18:45 | |
You must remember, we were young. | 0:18:45 | 0:18:46 | |
When you think what the youngsters do now - | 0:18:46 | 0:18:49 | |
jumping out of aeroplanes and bungee jumping. | 0:18:49 | 0:18:52 | |
Nothing seemed dangerous. | 0:18:52 | 0:18:54 | |
Nothing seemed out of our abilities, if you like. | 0:18:54 | 0:18:58 | |
I never remember being instructed on to how to use a parachute. | 0:18:59 | 0:19:04 | |
We were usually taught forced landing was the better way. | 0:19:04 | 0:19:08 | |
If the engine cut, try to save the aeroplane if you can | 0:19:08 | 0:19:13 | |
by making as good a forced landing as you could. | 0:19:13 | 0:19:17 | |
Don't be a bleedin' hero, just try to get it down safely. | 0:19:17 | 0:19:20 | |
If you knew you were near an American airfield | 0:19:20 | 0:19:23 | |
you would always choose that, | 0:19:23 | 0:19:24 | |
partly because they were full of admiration for us flying, | 0:19:24 | 0:19:28 | |
and the food was better in the mess, you got a good lunch. | 0:19:28 | 0:19:32 | |
And also they would take you to the PX | 0:19:32 | 0:19:34 | |
which was their equivalent of NAAFI, their shop. | 0:19:34 | 0:19:38 | |
And there they would let you buy lipstick and chocolate and stockings. | 0:19:38 | 0:19:42 | |
The proudest achievement of my life, obviously, was flying the Spitfire, | 0:19:42 | 0:19:47 | |
being allowed to fly this aircraft, which everyone knew about, | 0:19:47 | 0:19:52 | |
that sort of saved the country in the Battle Of Britain, | 0:19:52 | 0:19:55 | |
and I was allowed to fly it. | 0:19:55 | 0:19:57 | |
I don't think I could do anything that would make me prouder than that. | 0:19:57 | 0:20:01 | |
There's a story that when he couldn't subdue us in the Battle Of Britain, | 0:20:01 | 0:20:07 | |
Hitler got cross with Goering | 0:20:07 | 0:20:09 | |
and said, "What do you want to wipe out this air force?" | 0:20:09 | 0:20:13 | |
And Goering said, "A squadron of Spitfires." | 0:20:13 | 0:20:16 | |
Joy tells her story so charmingly | 0:20:17 | 0:20:19 | |
that you could easily forget just how much nerve it took, | 0:20:19 | 0:20:23 | |
climbing into a Spitfire with so little experience, | 0:20:23 | 0:20:26 | |
in the middle of the war. | 0:20:26 | 0:20:29 | |
And would she have found it difficult to fly the Spitfire? | 0:20:29 | 0:20:33 | |
I don't think so. I think the Spitfire's a delight to fly. | 0:20:33 | 0:20:37 | |
I think as long as you follow the basic rules of, you know, | 0:20:37 | 0:20:40 | |
opening the throttle slowly on takeoff | 0:20:40 | 0:20:42 | |
and treating the aeroplane with respect, | 0:20:42 | 0:20:44 | |
it's a delight to fly. | 0:20:44 | 0:20:46 | |
So the only thing she would have difficulty with, I suppose, | 0:20:46 | 0:20:49 | |
would be the prejudice of some of the male pilots | 0:20:49 | 0:20:52 | |
who would have thought a girl couldn't do a thing like that. | 0:20:52 | 0:20:55 | |
That's exactly. | 0:20:55 | 0:20:56 | |
I don't know, it's a little bit of that. | 0:20:56 | 0:21:00 | |
But probably laid to rest when a Spitfire arrived out of the gloom | 0:21:00 | 0:21:04 | |
on a foggy day, and a young lady steps out of it. | 0:21:04 | 0:21:07 | |
A lot of the pilots would have liked that, wouldn't they? | 0:21:07 | 0:21:10 | |
Yes, quite right. | 0:21:10 | 0:21:12 | |
MH434 was delivered to RAF Hornchurch in Essex | 0:21:12 | 0:21:16 | |
where it became the favourite plane of an ace South African airman, | 0:21:16 | 0:21:20 | |
Flight Lieutenant Pat Lardner-Burke. | 0:21:20 | 0:21:22 | |
He had already established a reputation | 0:21:22 | 0:21:25 | |
as a top-class fighter pilot | 0:21:25 | 0:21:27 | |
when he received his brand-new Mark IX Spit. | 0:21:27 | 0:21:31 | |
He revelled in being centre-stage in battle. | 0:21:31 | 0:21:34 | |
But he was less keen on the limelight in peacetime. | 0:21:34 | 0:21:38 | |
Remarkably, his children are only finding out now, | 0:21:38 | 0:21:41 | |
40 years after his death, what an extraordinary man their father was. | 0:21:41 | 0:21:47 | |
When did you first see all this stuff that your father had? | 0:21:47 | 0:21:51 | |
-It was probably only about two months ago. -Really? | 0:21:51 | 0:21:54 | |
Well, I've always known that it's, you know, | 0:21:54 | 0:21:57 | |
it's been in the family, but my mother, as good a hoarder as she was, | 0:21:57 | 0:22:01 | |
she generally had all of this stuff boxed up and kept in the attic. | 0:22:01 | 0:22:05 | |
This is an amazing treasure trove, isn't it? | 0:22:05 | 0:22:08 | |
What have we, what is this? | 0:22:08 | 0:22:10 | |
I think here you have got the... the seat for the Spitfire, | 0:22:10 | 0:22:14 | |
and this is the parachute. | 0:22:14 | 0:22:16 | |
Named as Squadron Leader Lardner-Burke, so... | 0:22:16 | 0:22:18 | |
So it was written on there. | 0:22:18 | 0:22:20 | |
Ready to go. He would have been flying Spitfires at that time. | 0:22:20 | 0:22:23 | |
-We've got his boots, haven't we? -It's the flying boots. | 0:22:23 | 0:22:26 | |
I understand the idea of these was that the fur part was detachable | 0:22:26 | 0:22:29 | |
so that they could, if they were shot down over the Continent, | 0:22:29 | 0:22:32 | |
they would detach this part of the boot, or the top part, | 0:22:32 | 0:22:36 | |
so they could pretend that they were a French civilian, possibly. | 0:22:36 | 0:22:40 | |
-And walk their way to Switzerland if they were lucky. -Hopefully, yes. | 0:22:40 | 0:22:44 | |
Yeah. Now this is the famous helmet. | 0:22:44 | 0:22:46 | |
This is the proper, this is the pukka helmet, yes. | 0:22:46 | 0:22:49 | |
When we think of a Spitfire pilot, we think of them wearing these. | 0:22:49 | 0:22:52 | |
Well, this is, I can promise you, this is original. | 0:22:52 | 0:22:55 | |
Yeah, here are the goggles. | 0:22:55 | 0:22:57 | |
The goggles. The oxygen mask. | 0:22:57 | 0:23:01 | |
What's it like for you, seeing this equipment that your father had? | 0:23:01 | 0:23:06 | |
It has reignited our father's memory. | 0:23:06 | 0:23:10 | |
-That's your dad there, isn't it? -It is, yes. | 0:23:10 | 0:23:13 | |
That's his Natal Squadron, 222 Squadron, based at Hornchurch | 0:23:13 | 0:23:17 | |
and he would have been flying 434. | 0:23:17 | 0:23:20 | |
So these would be his flying friends. | 0:23:20 | 0:23:22 | |
And that's him. Looks as if he's alongside a Spitfire, doesn't it? | 0:23:22 | 0:23:26 | |
It does. That's certainly him. This is the 222 Squadron. | 0:23:26 | 0:23:29 | |
-Where is he in the picture? -Sitting on the front row with... | 0:23:29 | 0:23:32 | |
seems to have the squadron dog in front of him. | 0:23:32 | 0:23:35 | |
-Squadron dog, he seemed keen on dogs. -He does, yes. | 0:23:35 | 0:23:38 | |
We never saw any of that in later life. | 0:23:38 | 0:23:40 | |
Do you wish you could have asked him about the war when you knew him? | 0:23:40 | 0:23:43 | |
I would say that we actually spoke very little about it, if at all. | 0:23:43 | 0:23:47 | |
He certainly wasn't going to start discussing the war | 0:23:47 | 0:23:50 | |
with his young children, so very, very little. | 0:23:50 | 0:23:54 | |
He died when I was 14, | 0:23:54 | 0:23:56 | |
so I do feel that perhaps we would have a little... | 0:23:56 | 0:24:00 | |
If I was a little older and, you know, | 0:24:00 | 0:24:02 | |
we'd have had a pint of beer in a pub, | 0:24:02 | 0:24:04 | |
I think maybe we could have spoken about it. | 0:24:04 | 0:24:06 | |
But as we were children, it was never discussed. | 0:24:06 | 0:24:10 | |
Martin never had the chance to talk to his dad about the war. | 0:24:20 | 0:24:25 | |
But his father's logbook reveals | 0:24:25 | 0:24:27 | |
that this was really where they played with fire - | 0:24:27 | 0:24:30 | |
the English Channel. | 0:24:30 | 0:24:32 | |
Our Spitfire marshalled the skies over this strip of sea. | 0:24:32 | 0:24:36 | |
It provided cover for Allied bombers headed for German targets in France. | 0:24:37 | 0:24:42 | |
Within three weeks of our Spitfire being built | 0:24:43 | 0:24:47 | |
it was in action against the Luftwaffe. | 0:24:47 | 0:24:50 | |
And for seven of some of the most difficult months of the war in 1943, | 0:24:50 | 0:24:57 | |
this aircraft was right in the thick of it. | 0:24:57 | 0:25:01 | |
And you can imagine what it would be like, | 0:25:01 | 0:25:04 | |
streaking out over the Channel, as we are now, | 0:25:04 | 0:25:07 | |
and at any moment, you could be hit by German raiders. | 0:25:07 | 0:25:10 | |
In fact, you were HOPING to meet German raiders. | 0:25:10 | 0:25:14 | |
Your job was to defend England. | 0:25:14 | 0:25:17 | |
Martin has allowed me to read the logbook | 0:25:17 | 0:25:21 | |
and also 222 Squadron's operational flying diary, | 0:25:21 | 0:25:26 | |
written during the war at debriefing sessions | 0:25:26 | 0:25:29 | |
which were held after his father's missions in MH434. | 0:25:29 | 0:25:33 | |
It's a remarkable account. | 0:25:33 | 0:25:36 | |
On August 27th, 1943, | 0:25:36 | 0:25:39 | |
Lardner-Burke set off at 1830 hours from his base in Essex. | 0:25:39 | 0:25:45 | |
He was a member of 222 Squadron, | 0:25:45 | 0:25:47 | |
which had 12 Spitfires in operation that day. | 0:25:47 | 0:25:51 | |
They were providing cover for 240 American B-17 bombers, | 0:25:51 | 0:25:56 | |
flying fortresses, each loaded with 8,000 pounds of bombs. | 0:25:56 | 0:26:01 | |
Pat Lardner-Burke died in 1970. | 0:26:02 | 0:26:05 | |
But there are still a few men left who know exactly what it feels like | 0:26:06 | 0:26:10 | |
to have to set off in a Spitfire to defend Britain, nearly 70 years ago. | 0:26:10 | 0:26:16 | |
Once you're up there, you're part and parcel of the aeroplane. | 0:26:20 | 0:26:23 | |
You can't be terrified. | 0:26:23 | 0:26:26 | |
Doesn't even take the time that it's now taking me to speak to you. | 0:26:26 | 0:26:31 | |
You're away. You're getting on with the job. | 0:26:31 | 0:26:34 | |
Once you're in that aeroplane, then a totally...resignation came in. | 0:26:34 | 0:26:39 | |
"I'm here, I've got to go, I'm going to do it." | 0:26:39 | 0:26:41 | |
Really, when you're in it you're in it so tight with the straps done up | 0:26:41 | 0:26:45 | |
so that when you turn upside down | 0:26:45 | 0:26:47 | |
you don't bang your head on the hood. | 0:26:47 | 0:26:49 | |
And I'm going to do my very best to get back | 0:26:49 | 0:26:52 | |
and do as much damage to those Black Cross "gentlemen" as I possibly can. | 0:26:52 | 0:26:58 | |
They crossed the Kent coast and then joined the bombers over the Channel. | 0:27:02 | 0:27:07 | |
They went over the French coast at Berck, near Calais. | 0:27:07 | 0:27:11 | |
They then turned north and hit very heavy flak. | 0:27:11 | 0:27:16 | |
Two of the planes were hit | 0:27:16 | 0:27:18 | |
and seven of the airmen were reported to have bailed out. | 0:27:18 | 0:27:23 | |
Flak is just a shell that explodes at a certain height. | 0:27:26 | 0:27:31 | |
And they used to get our height, absolutely. | 0:27:31 | 0:27:33 | |
The bomber crews had to just stay in position. | 0:27:33 | 0:27:37 | |
They had to take anything that was going. | 0:27:37 | 0:27:40 | |
I admired them immensely. | 0:27:40 | 0:27:42 | |
We were defending this country against the King's enemies. | 0:27:42 | 0:27:46 | |
And we knew anybody who thought at all would know that the effort | 0:27:46 | 0:27:52 | |
that was being put in by the Germans and the Luftwaffe, | 0:27:52 | 0:27:55 | |
they weren't doing it for fun. | 0:27:55 | 0:27:57 | |
They weren't doing that for fun. | 0:27:57 | 0:28:00 | |
And we had to stop 'em. | 0:28:00 | 0:28:02 | |
That was the important thing. | 0:28:02 | 0:28:04 | |
Not whether...Jim shot down ten and Bill shot down one | 0:28:04 | 0:28:09 | |
and poor old Sid didn't get any. | 0:28:09 | 0:28:11 | |
It didn't matter who shot down what. | 0:28:11 | 0:28:13 | |
It never worried me. It never worried me. | 0:28:13 | 0:28:15 | |
But what was important was that these Germans were up to no good | 0:28:15 | 0:28:22 | |
and they had to be stopped. | 0:28:22 | 0:28:24 | |
The Spitfires were orbiting at 26,000 feet when a call came through | 0:28:28 | 0:28:33 | |
saying that nine enemy aircraft were attacking the bombers below. | 0:28:33 | 0:28:39 | |
The 222 Squadron, led by Wing Commander Compton, | 0:28:39 | 0:28:43 | |
swooped down to attack the loose formation of Germany FW190. | 0:28:43 | 0:28:49 | |
You find yourself on your own. | 0:28:57 | 0:29:00 | |
I mean, if the wingman gets... | 0:29:00 | 0:29:02 | |
has to break away to look after himself and the rest, | 0:29:02 | 0:29:04 | |
you're on your own. It's up to you. | 0:29:04 | 0:29:08 | |
This is a dramatic moment. | 0:29:08 | 0:29:11 | |
In his MH434, our Spitfire, Lardner-Burke opened fire | 0:29:11 | 0:29:17 | |
on a Focke that had been firing at Wing Commander Compton. | 0:29:17 | 0:29:21 | |
He let rip with a two-second burst from 350 yards | 0:29:21 | 0:29:26 | |
and hit its wing and tail. | 0:29:26 | 0:29:29 | |
The Focke was hit and the MH434 turned sharply | 0:29:29 | 0:29:35 | |
and dived out of the way. | 0:29:35 | 0:29:36 | |
And it was just like a swarm of bees, | 0:29:40 | 0:29:42 | |
everything going round and round and round. | 0:29:42 | 0:29:45 | |
Don't stand around looking and thinking, "Where is everybody?" | 0:29:45 | 0:29:49 | |
Before you do that, chuck it around. | 0:29:49 | 0:29:51 | |
Chuck it... | 0:29:51 | 0:29:53 | |
I mean it, really, vicious. | 0:29:53 | 0:29:55 | |
Not in any flying manual that an instructor will tell you to do. | 0:29:55 | 0:29:59 | |
Lardner then turned his attention to a second plane, | 0:30:03 | 0:30:08 | |
opening up his machine guns for four to five seconds. | 0:30:08 | 0:30:11 | |
The Focke dived to avoid Lardner-Burke, | 0:30:11 | 0:30:15 | |
but the RAF pilot followed him to just 2,000 feet | 0:30:15 | 0:30:20 | |
and watched his crash near Calais. | 0:30:20 | 0:30:22 | |
So MH434 had had a good start to its campaign | 0:30:27 | 0:30:32 | |
and then headed home to its operational base at RAF Hornchurch. | 0:30:32 | 0:30:37 | |
Hornchurch was a key RAF command aerodrome | 0:30:48 | 0:30:51 | |
in both the First and Second World Wars. | 0:30:51 | 0:30:54 | |
The local people were used to living with the dangers of an airbase. | 0:30:54 | 0:30:59 | |
But it still seems very surprising that in 1937 | 0:30:59 | 0:31:02 | |
a school should be built so close to where the planes took off. | 0:31:02 | 0:31:08 | |
And that's where we're going next. | 0:31:08 | 0:31:11 | |
That school and its pupils are still keenly aware | 0:31:13 | 0:31:17 | |
of their close link with the Second World War. | 0:31:17 | 0:31:20 | |
-What do you think about the Spitfire? -It's fast. | 0:31:20 | 0:31:23 | |
It's fast, yes. | 0:31:23 | 0:31:24 | |
-Very manoeuvrable. -It's very manoeuvrable. | 0:31:24 | 0:31:27 | |
What else have we got? Wait a moment. | 0:31:27 | 0:31:29 | |
-It's cool. -It's what? -Very cool. | 0:31:29 | 0:31:30 | |
-Very cool? -Yeah. | 0:31:30 | 0:31:32 | |
-It's on our badge. -Where is it on the badge? | 0:31:32 | 0:31:34 | |
Oh, right, there it is on the badge, yeah. | 0:31:34 | 0:31:36 | |
-So is Spitfire your favourite plane? -ALL: -Yes. | 0:31:36 | 0:31:39 | |
That's the right answer. | 0:31:39 | 0:31:42 | |
'These children are almost as enthusiastic about the Spitfire | 0:31:42 | 0:31:45 | |
'as I was when I was their age.' | 0:31:45 | 0:31:48 | |
They're crazy about the old plane. | 0:31:48 | 0:31:51 | |
They may remember it fondly, but the 900 or so kids | 0:31:51 | 0:31:54 | |
that went to school here in 1943 lived with it daily, | 0:31:54 | 0:31:58 | |
and the pilots were their heroes, | 0:31:58 | 0:32:00 | |
all of which makes what happened on March 24th of that year so poignant. | 0:32:00 | 0:32:05 | |
Jim Ring was in class on that morning. | 0:32:07 | 0:32:09 | |
He was just nine years old. | 0:32:09 | 0:32:11 | |
Our teacher, Miss Cullen, was up at the blackboard | 0:32:13 | 0:32:18 | |
and we heard this awful noise | 0:32:18 | 0:32:23 | |
and it got louder, much louder. | 0:32:23 | 0:32:26 | |
And we just yelled to the teacher, "Get down, Miss." | 0:32:26 | 0:32:31 | |
And we all dived under our desks. | 0:32:31 | 0:32:32 | |
The sound Jim could hear was a Spitfire | 0:32:34 | 0:32:37 | |
heading straight for his classroom. | 0:32:37 | 0:32:39 | |
The pilot, an American volunteer, | 0:32:39 | 0:32:41 | |
knew his Merlin engine was in trouble soon after he took off | 0:32:41 | 0:32:44 | |
less than 500 yards from the school. | 0:32:44 | 0:32:48 | |
Official documents record that his engine failed | 0:32:48 | 0:32:51 | |
at just over 200 feet and that his plane went into a spin. | 0:32:51 | 0:32:55 | |
Those who were at the school vividly remember the scene. | 0:32:57 | 0:33:00 | |
So he tried to bank and turn towards this school | 0:33:02 | 0:33:06 | |
in an effort to get back to the airfield. | 0:33:06 | 0:33:09 | |
There were children in the playing field where he crashed | 0:33:09 | 0:33:13 | |
and they remember him signalling desperately to get out of the way. | 0:33:13 | 0:33:17 | |
He was so low and he realised he was going to hit the school | 0:33:17 | 0:33:21 | |
so he put the nose down on the Spitfire, which came down here. | 0:33:21 | 0:33:26 | |
So he deliberately crashed his Spitfire right here | 0:33:26 | 0:33:29 | |
in order to avoid going right into the school | 0:33:29 | 0:33:33 | |
-and killing lots of people. -That's right. | 0:33:33 | 0:33:36 | |
-And then what happened? -Well, it bounced up | 0:33:36 | 0:33:39 | |
and the wing struck the school wall there where the plaque is. | 0:33:39 | 0:33:43 | |
The pilot was killed on impact. | 0:33:45 | 0:33:48 | |
His name was Raymond Sanders Draper | 0:33:48 | 0:33:50 | |
and that's now the name of this school. | 0:33:50 | 0:33:52 | |
Jim and his fellow classmates | 0:33:52 | 0:33:55 | |
helped to have it renamed in his honour in 1973. | 0:33:55 | 0:33:59 | |
'The schoolboys from that tragic day remember Sanders Draper | 0:34:00 | 0:34:04 | |
'every year with a memorial service.' | 0:34:04 | 0:34:07 | |
Yes, hello. | 0:34:07 | 0:34:09 | |
'Jim has arranged for me to meet some of them.' | 0:34:09 | 0:34:11 | |
Hello. | 0:34:11 | 0:34:12 | |
-How do you do, John? -Right. Well, here we are assembled | 0:34:12 | 0:34:15 | |
and that is the grave stone, isn't it? | 0:34:15 | 0:34:18 | |
RS Draper. | 0:34:18 | 0:34:20 | |
What are your memories of that terrible day? | 0:34:20 | 0:34:23 | |
One of shock, actually. | 0:34:23 | 0:34:26 | |
Of hearing the tremendous bang as the craft came down. | 0:34:26 | 0:34:30 | |
Although we were told it was a Spitfire, | 0:34:30 | 0:34:33 | |
I went home thinking it was the Luftwaffe. | 0:34:33 | 0:34:36 | |
-Really? -I really did, yes. | 0:34:36 | 0:34:39 | |
-You thought it was an attack? -Yes. | 0:34:39 | 0:34:41 | |
-What are your thoughts now about this brave man? -I think about him a lot. | 0:34:41 | 0:34:44 | |
-Really? -I really do, yes, I do. | 0:34:44 | 0:34:46 | |
It's quite moving. | 0:34:46 | 0:34:48 | |
-It brings it back. -It does, it's quite moving. | 0:34:48 | 0:34:50 | |
If it hadn't have been for this man, none of our children | 0:34:50 | 0:34:54 | |
would have been born and their children wouldn't have been born. | 0:34:54 | 0:34:58 | |
It would have had such ramifications. | 0:34:58 | 0:35:00 | |
You can't express it in the same way as you can feel it. | 0:35:00 | 0:35:03 | |
-Our young days were taken up with the Spitfire. -Yeah. | 0:35:03 | 0:35:08 | |
You looked out of the school and you would see them taking off, | 0:35:08 | 0:35:11 | |
circling round, landing, you'd count them back in. | 0:35:11 | 0:35:14 | |
So all of you feel that you do really owe your lives to this man? | 0:35:14 | 0:35:19 | |
100%, yes. Without a shadow of a doubt. | 0:35:19 | 0:35:21 | |
If it had been a few feet higher, he would have gone through the window. | 0:35:21 | 0:35:25 | |
He would have smashed through the school. | 0:35:25 | 0:35:27 | |
So that's why you keep remembering? | 0:35:27 | 0:35:30 | |
Oh, it is. Yes. | 0:35:30 | 0:35:31 | |
I think also what is sort of striking for you at your age, | 0:35:31 | 0:35:36 | |
-is that this man was 29 when he died. -Yes. -Yes. | 0:35:36 | 0:35:38 | |
-That's quite something, isn't it? -Yes. -A young man. | 0:35:38 | 0:35:41 | |
-A young man. -Whole life in front of him. | 0:35:41 | 0:35:43 | |
Gave his life away. | 0:35:43 | 0:35:45 | |
-Well, not for nothing, for us. For us. -Yes. | 0:35:45 | 0:35:49 | |
'That's the true spirit of the Spitfire, isn't it? | 0:35:57 | 0:36:01 | |
'Young men and women doing remarkably brave things | 0:36:01 | 0:36:04 | |
'for people they didn't know and perhaps would never meet. | 0:36:04 | 0:36:08 | |
'Jim and his fellow classmates certainly haven't forgotten.' | 0:36:14 | 0:36:18 | |
Our plane, MH434, was delivered to RAF Hornchurch | 0:36:23 | 0:36:27 | |
just a few months after the accident at the school. | 0:36:27 | 0:36:31 | |
It wasn't a special Spitfire then. | 0:36:31 | 0:36:33 | |
There wouldn't have been a fanfare, | 0:36:33 | 0:36:36 | |
just another small moment in the old aerodrome's history. | 0:36:36 | 0:36:40 | |
RAF Hornchurch is now a nature reserve, | 0:36:42 | 0:36:44 | |
only a few signs of its past. | 0:36:44 | 0:36:46 | |
I came here in the 1960s as an RAF Cadet | 0:36:46 | 0:36:50 | |
anxious to get a flying scholarship, | 0:36:50 | 0:36:52 | |
and that's how I learned how to fly. | 0:36:52 | 0:36:55 | |
But when I was here, this was full of the buildings | 0:36:55 | 0:36:58 | |
and the runways of the war. | 0:36:58 | 0:37:00 | |
Like many aerodromes around London, air raids were common, | 0:37:05 | 0:37:09 | |
especially in the late summer of 1940. | 0:37:09 | 0:37:13 | |
A teleprinter operator, Joy Caldwell, | 0:37:13 | 0:37:16 | |
was just 19 when she reported for duty here at RAF Hornchurch. | 0:37:16 | 0:37:21 | |
In total in that three months of the Battle Of Britain | 0:37:21 | 0:37:24 | |
we had 20 air raids on Hornchurch Airfield. | 0:37:24 | 0:37:28 | |
One night we had a landmine came down. | 0:37:30 | 0:37:32 | |
They came down in parachutes as you probably know, | 0:37:34 | 0:37:37 | |
and it was caught onto the side of the hangar, | 0:37:37 | 0:37:40 | |
number three hangar, which was our nearest. That hung there | 0:37:40 | 0:37:44 | |
all night, and we knew that if it touched the ground | 0:37:44 | 0:37:47 | |
or if the wind got up that it would blow us to bits, | 0:37:47 | 0:37:50 | |
but we couldn't do anything about it, we just had to carry on. | 0:37:50 | 0:37:53 | |
About four in the morning the bomb disposal people came in | 0:37:53 | 0:37:57 | |
and they defused it. | 0:37:57 | 0:38:00 | |
They had a cup of tea with us and they went over to Elm Park | 0:38:00 | 0:38:04 | |
where another one had come down, | 0:38:04 | 0:38:07 | |
and unfortunately they blew themselves, | 0:38:07 | 0:38:09 | |
all of them were killed in that one. | 0:38:09 | 0:38:11 | |
Which, I mean, five minutes they were drinking tea with me, | 0:38:11 | 0:38:15 | |
the next minute they weren't there. | 0:38:15 | 0:38:17 | |
And you say you mourn, you don't mourn. | 0:38:17 | 0:38:20 | |
You see tragedy, yes, but you can't mourn. | 0:38:20 | 0:38:24 | |
It was another disaster or another thing that had happened | 0:38:24 | 0:38:28 | |
and you didn't talk about it, | 0:38:28 | 0:38:30 | |
you just lit another cigarette and got on with it. | 0:38:30 | 0:38:33 | |
The Battle of Britain marked | 0:38:33 | 0:38:35 | |
Hitler's first significant defeat in the Second World War. | 0:38:35 | 0:38:39 | |
But victory came at a terrible cost. | 0:38:39 | 0:38:42 | |
Over 500 RAF pilots were lost | 0:38:44 | 0:38:46 | |
and tens of thousands of civilians were killed or injured. | 0:38:46 | 0:38:52 | |
They always say you never hear the one that comes down and I didn't. | 0:38:52 | 0:38:55 | |
And it was pretty painful. | 0:38:55 | 0:39:00 | |
I was going into Ops and it blew me between the sandbags | 0:39:00 | 0:39:05 | |
over the counter onto a wireless set and it didn't half hurt. | 0:39:05 | 0:39:10 | |
I reported sick for the first time, the only time I reported sick, | 0:39:10 | 0:39:16 | |
and the MO said, "Oh, I've got plenty of dead round here. | 0:39:16 | 0:39:21 | |
"Just lean against the radiator for 48 hours | 0:39:21 | 0:39:24 | |
"and then you're back on duty." | 0:39:24 | 0:39:27 | |
And what they didn't know was that I'd fractured my back. | 0:39:27 | 0:39:31 | |
I am not special. I'm just a person. | 0:39:33 | 0:39:36 | |
I was put in a situation that any of you could have done | 0:39:36 | 0:39:41 | |
or would do to protect your freedom and your home. | 0:39:41 | 0:39:46 | |
You would have done the same. Any of you would have done the same. | 0:39:47 | 0:39:51 | |
Joy was working at Hornchurch on September 8th, 1943 | 0:39:54 | 0:39:58 | |
when her colleague, Flight Lieutenant Pat Lardner-Burke, | 0:39:58 | 0:40:03 | |
climbed into his Spitfire on the first of his three flights that day. | 0:40:03 | 0:40:08 | |
It was 0845 hours and MH434 | 0:40:08 | 0:40:11 | |
was part of a larger wing that were acting as high cover | 0:40:11 | 0:40:15 | |
for 72 Allied Marauders | 0:40:15 | 0:40:18 | |
as they headed for targets in Lille. | 0:40:18 | 0:40:21 | |
They were attacked by ten to twelve Focke-Wulf 190s, | 0:40:21 | 0:40:25 | |
but the wing continued its escort. | 0:40:25 | 0:40:28 | |
They lost one of their Spitfires, | 0:40:28 | 0:40:31 | |
but Lardner-Burke got his plane home safely. | 0:40:31 | 0:40:33 | |
The excitement was enormous, enormous. | 0:40:36 | 0:40:39 | |
And, I mean, I always found that when I came back, | 0:40:39 | 0:40:42 | |
although it might be cold, I was still sweating. | 0:40:42 | 0:40:45 | |
You've got to love it | 0:40:45 | 0:40:46 | |
because you went into combat daily with it, together. | 0:40:46 | 0:40:50 | |
You and that aeroplane. | 0:40:50 | 0:40:52 | |
My Spitfire and me. | 0:40:52 | 0:40:55 | |
At 13.45 Lardner and his plane were back in the sky again, | 0:41:00 | 0:41:04 | |
this time providing cover for 12 Venturas on their way to Abbeville. | 0:41:04 | 0:41:11 | |
They flew over France at just 2,000 feet | 0:41:11 | 0:41:14 | |
climbing to a height of 22,000. | 0:41:14 | 0:41:17 | |
Soon they came across 12 Fockes. | 0:41:17 | 0:41:21 | |
It looked like they hadn't been spotted and dived to attack. | 0:41:21 | 0:41:26 | |
He would have to be very sharp. | 0:41:29 | 0:41:31 | |
This was all happening in short seconds | 0:41:31 | 0:41:35 | |
with lots of your colleagues around you in formation, | 0:41:35 | 0:41:39 | |
all joining together to do something. | 0:41:39 | 0:41:43 | |
You are worrying about the guys that you're flying with, | 0:41:43 | 0:41:47 | |
the operation that you're on, | 0:41:47 | 0:41:49 | |
whether you're going to do the right thing, | 0:41:49 | 0:41:51 | |
whether you're going to make a mistake, | 0:41:51 | 0:41:53 | |
whether you're going to come home with the same number of people. | 0:41:53 | 0:41:57 | |
Another three or four minutes | 0:41:57 | 0:41:59 | |
and it had all disappeared and you're by yourself. | 0:41:59 | 0:42:02 | |
The Focke-Wulf 190s broke formation | 0:42:09 | 0:42:11 | |
and 222 Squadron only managed to hit one of the enemy aircraft. | 0:42:11 | 0:42:17 | |
Lardner-Burke was back in Hornchurch just after three o'clock. | 0:42:17 | 0:42:21 | |
You watched the Spitfires being refuelled, rearmed, | 0:42:21 | 0:42:26 | |
bullet holes patched, everybody working like mad. | 0:42:26 | 0:42:29 | |
And then the phone would go and you'd think, | 0:42:29 | 0:42:32 | |
"God this is a quick one, | 0:42:32 | 0:42:33 | |
"we've only been on the deck an hour and a half, two hours," | 0:42:33 | 0:42:36 | |
and off you'd go again. | 0:42:36 | 0:42:38 | |
You would be exhausted, but you had a certain sort of | 0:42:38 | 0:42:44 | |
feeling of unity with the others in your squadron. | 0:42:44 | 0:42:48 | |
They were an amazing bunch of guys. You should have met them. | 0:42:49 | 0:42:53 | |
Just before six in the evening, 222 Squadron | 0:42:56 | 0:42:59 | |
spotted 12 Messerschmitt 109s. | 0:42:59 | 0:43:03 | |
Lardner-Burke and another 222 pilot opened fire | 0:43:03 | 0:43:06 | |
and black smoke was seen bellowing from the plane. | 0:43:06 | 0:43:09 | |
Lardner-Burke broke to the left, | 0:43:09 | 0:43:12 | |
allowing the other pilot to fire for 14 seconds. | 0:43:12 | 0:43:14 | |
The Messerschmitt ploughed into the ground at 500 miles an hour. | 0:43:17 | 0:43:21 | |
From up here Britain looks so peaceful. | 0:43:27 | 0:43:32 | |
It's hard to believe that 70 years ago | 0:43:32 | 0:43:35 | |
we would have been flying through a battlefield. | 0:43:35 | 0:43:38 | |
But there's still plenty of evidence of Britain's flying past, | 0:43:41 | 0:43:45 | |
if you know where to look. | 0:43:45 | 0:43:47 | |
We can see Biggin Hill down there, can't we? | 0:43:47 | 0:43:50 | |
Yeah, the main runway you can see running across from left to right. | 0:43:50 | 0:43:55 | |
And that was such an important airfield | 0:43:56 | 0:43:58 | |
-during the Battle of Britain, wasn't it? -Absolutely. | 0:43:58 | 0:44:01 | |
Biggin Hill's closeness to London | 0:44:01 | 0:44:04 | |
made it a prime target for the Luftwaffe. | 0:44:04 | 0:44:08 | |
RAF squadrons based here | 0:44:08 | 0:44:09 | |
claim to have destroyed more than 1,000 enemy aircraft, | 0:44:09 | 0:44:13 | |
losing several hundred pilots in the process. | 0:44:13 | 0:44:17 | |
Ground crew suffered too, with many people being killed | 0:44:19 | 0:44:23 | |
in a dozen separate attacks spread over six months. | 0:44:23 | 0:44:27 | |
I suppose what's striking, | 0:44:31 | 0:44:32 | |
always when you're up in the air watching the Spitfire pilots, | 0:44:32 | 0:44:35 | |
you think how lonely they must have been | 0:44:35 | 0:44:39 | |
and how difficult it must have been controlling these small planes, | 0:44:39 | 0:44:43 | |
all right, fighting for your country, | 0:44:43 | 0:44:45 | |
but at extraordinary personal risk | 0:44:45 | 0:44:47 | |
when you would know that many of your friends would have been killed on these missions. | 0:44:47 | 0:44:51 | |
So coming home, as we are now, flying down, | 0:44:51 | 0:44:55 | |
this must have been a terrific sense of relief | 0:44:55 | 0:44:59 | |
that we are back on the ground. | 0:44:59 | 0:45:01 | |
Back on terra firma. | 0:45:01 | 0:45:04 | |
But sometimes it's easy to forget | 0:45:10 | 0:45:13 | |
that for every Spitfire pilot in the air, | 0:45:13 | 0:45:16 | |
there was always someone on the ground | 0:45:16 | 0:45:18 | |
anxiously waiting to see if they would come home. | 0:45:18 | 0:45:22 | |
Flight Lieutenant Pat Lardner-Burke's son, Martin, | 0:45:23 | 0:45:27 | |
has found some letters from his mother | 0:45:27 | 0:45:29 | |
that reveal the extraordinary demands made, | 0:45:29 | 0:45:33 | |
not just on the pilots but also on their families. | 0:45:33 | 0:45:36 | |
We'd actually only just unearthed these very recently, | 0:45:38 | 0:45:41 | |
a couple of days ago. | 0:45:41 | 0:45:43 | |
Credit to my mother here. I mean, she's a wonderful hoarder. | 0:45:43 | 0:45:46 | |
"On Sunday afternoon I went down to Hornchurch, | 0:45:46 | 0:45:49 | |
"Sundays being the day when females are allowed onto the premises." | 0:45:49 | 0:45:52 | |
"Pat is expected to have the afternoon off, | 0:45:52 | 0:45:55 | |
"though when I arrived he was away on an unexpected sweep, | 0:45:55 | 0:45:58 | |
"so the adjutant met me with the squadron car. | 0:45:58 | 0:46:00 | |
"Pat arrived back at about four and we then had tea and sat on the lawn." | 0:46:00 | 0:46:04 | |
"At six o'clock they went off on another sweep." | 0:46:04 | 0:46:08 | |
"I managed to get down to the aerodrome and then watched all 26 Spitfires take off." | 0:46:08 | 0:46:12 | |
"It was a marvellous sight." | 0:46:12 | 0:46:13 | |
And 26 Spitfires took off, and, er... | 0:46:13 | 0:46:18 | |
..you know, she just sat on the lawn. HIS VOICE BREAKS | 0:46:19 | 0:46:23 | |
Yeah. | 0:46:23 | 0:46:25 | |
And these guys would, you know, the wives and the girlfriends | 0:46:25 | 0:46:28 | |
would just sit there and hope that 26 got counted back again. | 0:46:28 | 0:46:32 | |
"They were away for one-and-a-half hours, | 0:46:35 | 0:46:37 | |
"and then we watched them all come back again." | 0:46:37 | 0:46:39 | |
But they had to just wait. | 0:46:42 | 0:46:44 | |
Well, you imagine having a tea party, | 0:46:44 | 0:46:46 | |
and suddenly all the partners take off, | 0:46:46 | 0:46:50 | |
-and you just don't know if they're coming back, do you? -No. | 0:46:50 | 0:46:53 | |
Do you feel you know him? Do you feel closer to him now? | 0:46:55 | 0:46:57 | |
I actually do, yes, yes. | 0:46:57 | 0:47:00 | |
Yeah. And your feelings about him? | 0:47:00 | 0:47:03 | |
Well, he's still my father. | 0:47:05 | 0:47:08 | |
We knew him when we were young. | 0:47:08 | 0:47:10 | |
I mean it's a bit tricky, I can't... That's not one I can really answer | 0:47:10 | 0:47:13 | |
because, you know, my feelings are for my father. | 0:47:13 | 0:47:18 | |
-But pride? -Oh, there is pride, yes. | 0:47:18 | 0:47:20 | |
-A lot of pride. -Yes. | 0:47:20 | 0:47:23 | |
Flight Lieutenant Pat Lardner-Burke recorded his last flight with MH434 | 0:47:28 | 0:47:33 | |
in October of 1943. | 0:47:33 | 0:47:36 | |
They'd been together on nearly 60 sorties | 0:47:36 | 0:47:38 | |
and claimed two-and-a-half kills - | 0:47:38 | 0:47:42 | |
two Focke-Wulf 190s and a Messerschmitt 109 | 0:47:42 | 0:47:44 | |
he had shot down with his 222 colleague. | 0:47:44 | 0:47:48 | |
D-Day now loomed large on the horizon. | 0:47:52 | 0:47:56 | |
It was the ultimate call to arms, a vital part of the Spitfire story. | 0:47:56 | 0:48:01 | |
Unfortunately, we lose track of our plane | 0:48:01 | 0:48:05 | |
three months before the Normandy landings. | 0:48:05 | 0:48:08 | |
These photos of MH434 were taken then at Hornchurch. | 0:48:08 | 0:48:14 | |
Flight Lieutenant Lardner-Burke was put in charge of 1 Squadron, | 0:48:14 | 0:48:19 | |
and he played an active role on D-Day. | 0:48:19 | 0:48:22 | |
Sadly, the D-Day generation are disappearing, | 0:48:22 | 0:48:27 | |
but there are still a few special people who remember | 0:48:27 | 0:48:30 | |
one of the most extraordinary days in our history. | 0:48:30 | 0:48:35 | |
When we flew on the morning of June 6th, the Solent was empty, | 0:48:35 | 0:48:40 | |
all the mechanised vehicles had gone, | 0:48:40 | 0:48:43 | |
and one thought about those boys on the beaches, | 0:48:43 | 0:48:46 | |
although we didn't know how bad it was going to be. | 0:48:46 | 0:48:49 | |
We took off at four something, | 0:48:49 | 0:48:51 | |
and we were over the beaches at 5.20 for the dawn. | 0:48:51 | 0:48:55 | |
And we looked down and saw this colossal armada. | 0:48:55 | 0:48:59 | |
I mean, everybody's described it better than I can. | 0:48:59 | 0:49:02 | |
I do believe that in World War II, | 0:49:08 | 0:49:10 | |
a Spitfire pilot's role was an extremely important one, | 0:49:10 | 0:49:14 | |
and obviously the landings in D-Day and the need for protection | 0:49:14 | 0:49:19 | |
to our thousands of ships and the men who went across | 0:49:19 | 0:49:25 | |
was a vital protective element. | 0:49:25 | 0:49:28 | |
The sea was just littered with ships. | 0:49:32 | 0:49:34 | |
The Navy were there | 0:49:34 | 0:49:36 | |
with several of the captured French battleships as well, | 0:49:36 | 0:49:39 | |
and they were all firing up into the air, mainly at us. | 0:49:39 | 0:49:42 | |
I think they'd been warned there was going to be a huge invasion, | 0:49:42 | 0:49:47 | |
probably of 109s, which look a little bit like a Spitfire, | 0:49:47 | 0:49:52 | |
and everybody was a bit trigger-happy, I suppose. | 0:49:52 | 0:49:55 | |
We didn't... We didn't grumble about it. | 0:49:55 | 0:49:57 | |
It was a natural thing, I suppose, to happen. | 0:49:57 | 0:50:00 | |
At least they were firing at somebody. | 0:50:00 | 0:50:02 | |
The Spitfire story has so many elements. | 0:50:13 | 0:50:16 | |
Sacrifice. | 0:50:16 | 0:50:18 | |
Bravery. | 0:50:19 | 0:50:21 | |
Even glamour. | 0:50:22 | 0:50:24 | |
The British people loved the Spitfire. | 0:50:24 | 0:50:27 | |
It's a romance of a kind. | 0:50:27 | 0:50:31 | |
But I don't think any Spitfire love story can beat this one. | 0:50:31 | 0:50:35 | |
Engineer Joe and truck driver Betty, or Butch to her friends, | 0:50:35 | 0:50:41 | |
met working on Spitfires during the war. | 0:50:41 | 0:50:45 | |
If there's three things in this story, | 0:50:45 | 0:50:47 | |
it's Betty, Joe and the Spitfire. | 0:50:47 | 0:50:49 | |
Their love story began in a hangar at Biggin Hill in 1943. | 0:50:49 | 0:50:55 | |
Joe was standing on the wing of the plane. | 0:50:56 | 0:51:00 | |
-A plane like this? -Yes. | 0:51:00 | 0:51:02 | |
-And of course they were all cheeky. -Were they? -Oh, yes! | 0:51:02 | 0:51:06 | |
I looked at her and I thought, "Mm, I wonder." | 0:51:06 | 0:51:10 | |
-You wonder what? -"She's the best-looking lot in that bunch, | 0:51:10 | 0:51:13 | |
-"I wonder if I've got a chance with her." -Right. | 0:51:13 | 0:51:15 | |
And I obviously had, | 0:51:15 | 0:51:17 | |
cos I think she said something like it, but a lot ruder. | 0:51:17 | 0:51:21 | |
Did you really? Can you remember that, Betty? | 0:51:21 | 0:51:23 | |
I think it was a bit saucy. | 0:51:23 | 0:51:25 | |
No, go on, you can tell us now. We're ready for it. | 0:51:25 | 0:51:28 | |
-And if you don't, I will. -You say it. | 0:51:28 | 0:51:31 | |
-She says, "I'm having some of that." -Did you really?! | 0:51:31 | 0:51:35 | |
Goodness me! I mean, this is shocking, isn't it? | 0:51:35 | 0:51:38 | |
She was only 22, you know, we were both 22 then. | 0:51:38 | 0:51:41 | |
So before you knew where you were, you were going to dances together. | 0:51:41 | 0:51:44 | |
-Yes, well we were both mad on dancing. -Right. | 0:51:44 | 0:51:47 | |
-Absolutely mad on dancing. -Like you. | 0:51:47 | 0:51:49 | |
Joe and Betty's friendship blossomed | 0:51:49 | 0:51:51 | |
in the dance halls in and around London. | 0:51:51 | 0:51:54 | |
A night of dancing the foxtrot, the waltz and the rumba | 0:51:54 | 0:51:57 | |
provided them and other servicemen and women | 0:51:57 | 0:52:00 | |
with a brief respite from the realities of the war. | 0:52:00 | 0:52:03 | |
But as Joe and Betty grew closer, | 0:52:03 | 0:52:05 | |
there was one reality they could not escape from. | 0:52:05 | 0:52:09 | |
We had feelings for each other, but Betty had informed me, | 0:52:10 | 0:52:14 | |
she says, "Look, I am engaged." | 0:52:14 | 0:52:16 | |
Now, Bet was engaged to | 0:52:16 | 0:52:18 | |
-a sergeant engine fitter in the RAF in the Middle East. -Right. | 0:52:18 | 0:52:22 | |
After that, as far as I was concerned, there was no romance. | 0:52:22 | 0:52:25 | |
There wasn't going to be any romance. | 0:52:25 | 0:52:27 | |
I wasn't going to query that bloke's pitch | 0:52:27 | 0:52:29 | |
when I'd drawn the good straw languishing at home | 0:52:29 | 0:52:33 | |
and he was out in the desert. | 0:52:33 | 0:52:34 | |
So you then felt, Betty, that you'd made a promise to your fiance. | 0:52:34 | 0:52:39 | |
My fiance arrived in England and I had to come and tell Joe that... | 0:52:39 | 0:52:43 | |
..that he had come home and this would have to be the end of it, you see. | 0:52:44 | 0:52:49 | |
And my old life was returning and I had...had to forget Joe. | 0:52:51 | 0:52:58 | |
But I was very, very upset, in tears. | 0:52:58 | 0:53:01 | |
I asked her to marry me. | 0:53:01 | 0:53:04 | |
I'd got it out, that's what I wanted to do. | 0:53:04 | 0:53:06 | |
I wanted to hear myself ask her. | 0:53:06 | 0:53:08 | |
Because you knew that you were... | 0:53:08 | 0:53:10 | |
Because I knew that she wouldn't say yes. | 0:53:10 | 0:53:13 | |
Not that I didn't want her to say yes, | 0:53:13 | 0:53:15 | |
I would have loved her to have said yes, but she couldn't. | 0:53:15 | 0:53:19 | |
It was a very hard thing to say no to Joe, really. | 0:53:19 | 0:53:23 | |
It was... It's something I can't answer, really. | 0:53:23 | 0:53:27 | |
Well, I'm not even going to try and help you here, love, | 0:53:27 | 0:53:29 | |
because I can't. | 0:53:29 | 0:53:31 | |
-I know the dilemma you must have been in. -Yes. | 0:53:31 | 0:53:33 | |
I wasn't. I was footloose and fancy-free, | 0:53:33 | 0:53:36 | |
so I couldn't put myself in your place, | 0:53:36 | 0:53:38 | |
and I knew that if I asked you and expected an answer | 0:53:38 | 0:53:41 | |
I'd be hurting you, causing you more problems. | 0:53:41 | 0:53:44 | |
So I didn't push it. | 0:53:44 | 0:53:46 | |
Joe and Betty had their last dance together | 0:53:46 | 0:53:49 | |
in the Worthing Town Hall in 1944. | 0:53:49 | 0:53:52 | |
Joe tells me it was a slow foxtrot. | 0:53:52 | 0:53:55 | |
Betty married her fiance, | 0:53:55 | 0:53:57 | |
and Joe also settled down and started a family. | 0:53:57 | 0:54:01 | |
In 2004, now both widowed, Betty was watching the telly | 0:54:01 | 0:54:06 | |
when there on the screen she recognised an old friend talking about his beloved Spitfire. | 0:54:06 | 0:54:12 | |
Soon afterwards, | 0:54:12 | 0:54:14 | |
they spoke to each other for the first time in 60 years. | 0:54:14 | 0:54:18 | |
Once again, some of that old Spitfire magic | 0:54:18 | 0:54:22 | |
had brought Joe and Betty together. | 0:54:22 | 0:54:25 | |
I knew that we must meet. | 0:54:25 | 0:54:26 | |
We must see each other again to see if there was owt still alight. | 0:54:26 | 0:54:30 | |
And she met me at Chichester station, | 0:54:30 | 0:54:34 | |
and, to me, she looked like | 0:54:34 | 0:54:35 | |
the same lass I'd said cheerio to 60 years ago. | 0:54:35 | 0:54:37 | |
-Really? -Yes. | 0:54:37 | 0:54:39 | |
What did you think about him? | 0:54:39 | 0:54:40 | |
Well, he had the same voice, a little grey. | 0:54:40 | 0:54:42 | |
BETTY LAUGHS But just the same old Joe. | 0:54:42 | 0:54:47 | |
We went about like we used to when we were 22. | 0:54:47 | 0:54:50 | |
We'd even hold bloody hands. People used to look at us going out, you know. | 0:54:50 | 0:54:54 | |
But it's...it's very hard to explain, John, very hard. | 0:54:54 | 0:54:59 | |
Yes, yeah. | 0:54:59 | 0:55:00 | |
-It was there, wasn't it, love? It still is. -Oh, yes. | 0:55:00 | 0:55:03 | |
I think, really, we get on better in a way | 0:55:03 | 0:55:06 | |
because we have more time together, | 0:55:06 | 0:55:10 | |
rather than just under a bloody Spitfire wing or in a dispersal hut | 0:55:10 | 0:55:17 | |
or, er...in some snoggy little dance hall somewhere. | 0:55:17 | 0:55:22 | |
We're our own people now. | 0:55:22 | 0:55:23 | |
We're living it that way, | 0:55:23 | 0:55:25 | |
the way we would have done had we got married in the times we met. | 0:55:25 | 0:55:28 | |
These last seven years have been wonderful. | 0:55:28 | 0:55:31 | |
-And you love each other. -Of course we do. | 0:55:31 | 0:55:33 | |
There's that many ways of defining love, I don't know. | 0:55:33 | 0:55:36 | |
-But if it means do you want to be together all the time, yes, we do. -Yes. | 0:55:36 | 0:55:41 | |
Well, for me that is the greatest love story ever told, | 0:55:41 | 0:55:45 | |
the final scene in our Spitfire story. | 0:55:45 | 0:55:47 | |
But surely endings don't always have to be cut and dried. | 0:55:50 | 0:55:53 | |
We've left some loose ends. | 0:55:53 | 0:55:56 | |
What about our plane, MH434? | 0:55:56 | 0:55:58 | |
You might have thought its fighting days were over when World War II ended, | 0:55:58 | 0:56:03 | |
but they weren't. It flew for the Royal Dutch Air Force, | 0:56:03 | 0:56:07 | |
crash landing in the Dutch East Indies in 1947, | 0:56:07 | 0:56:10 | |
and then moved to the Belgian Air Force | 0:56:10 | 0:56:13 | |
before returning to Britain in the 1950s. | 0:56:13 | 0:56:17 | |
The Spitfire. It's 75 years since the first one flew, | 0:56:21 | 0:56:26 | |
and they're now more beautiful than ever. | 0:56:26 | 0:56:28 | |
The pilots who fly them say there's nothing better. | 0:56:28 | 0:56:32 | |
But we can't just leave it like that. | 0:56:32 | 0:56:36 | |
It's time for former Cadet Sergeant Sergeant to have a go. | 0:56:36 | 0:56:40 | |
And here's my new best friend, a Spitfire with room for two. | 0:56:40 | 0:56:46 | |
Oh, this is the moment. This is the moment! | 0:56:46 | 0:56:51 | |
And we're taking off. Wow! | 0:56:51 | 0:56:53 | |
MUSIC: "Wake Up" by Arcade Fire | 0:56:53 | 0:56:56 | |
It was the greatest thrill of my life. | 0:57:01 | 0:57:03 | |
Wow. Look at that. Look at that! | 0:57:03 | 0:57:06 | |
So easy to manoeuvre that it must have been | 0:57:06 | 0:57:11 | |
the very nearest thing to having wings oneself. | 0:57:11 | 0:57:13 | |
I'm flying it. I'm actually flying a Spitfire. | 0:57:13 | 0:57:18 | |
Special, superb, splendid... | 0:57:18 | 0:57:21 | |
I've been given control | 0:57:21 | 0:57:22 | |
of the greatest plane that's ever been made. | 0:57:22 | 0:57:26 | |
You more or less put it on and you were flying. | 0:57:26 | 0:57:30 | |
Richard, what do I do now? | 0:57:30 | 0:57:31 | |
Move to your left, John, moving off to the left. | 0:57:31 | 0:57:34 | |
-OK, you have control. -I have control. | 0:57:34 | 0:57:37 | |
-You have control. -OK. -Thank you. | 0:57:37 | 0:57:39 | |
Once you've got a Spitfire right, you could do anything with it. | 0:57:39 | 0:57:42 | |
Oh, goodness me, we're going low now, right over the airfield. | 0:57:42 | 0:57:46 | |
We felt we had the best aeroplanes in the world. | 0:57:49 | 0:57:52 | |
What a climb, and you can feel the climb, over we go. | 0:57:52 | 0:57:56 | |
Oh, gosh! A victory roll! | 0:57:56 | 0:57:58 | |
You can't expect chaps to fly and fight in a Spitfire | 0:57:58 | 0:58:02 | |
and then forget about it. | 0:58:02 | 0:58:04 | |
It's imprinted on your mind for ever. | 0:58:04 | 0:58:06 | |
Yeah. We've done it. | 0:58:06 | 0:58:09 | |
That was a victory roll. | 0:58:09 | 0:58:12 | |
Ah! It's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. | 0:58:12 | 0:58:17 | |
When I started on this programme, | 0:58:19 | 0:58:22 | |
I thought it would be interesting and fun. | 0:58:22 | 0:58:24 | |
What I didn't expect was to get so emotionally involved. | 0:58:24 | 0:58:29 | |
It's churned me up. | 0:58:29 | 0:58:31 | |
It's turned me upside down. | 0:58:31 | 0:58:33 | |
This Spitfire... | 0:58:33 | 0:58:35 | |
what a story! | 0:58:35 | 0:58:37 | |
Whoo! | 0:58:41 | 0:58:43 | |
Happy birthday, Spitfire. Many happy returns. | 0:58:43 | 0:58:48 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:59:02 | 0:59:04 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 0:59:04 | 0:59:07 |