ST HOUR - Winston Churchill

'.."• '"'«••,. v " • • • -"-T*/^*-.. : ^^iSjj^&w£}The Battle of Britain took placein the skies over southeastEngland between July andOctober 1940. The Roll of Honour inthe Battle of Britain Memorial Chapelin Westminster Abbey lists the namesof 1503 Royal Air Force and Fleet AirArm personnel killed in the battle.German records are far from completebut authoritative estimates putthe number of Luftwaffe airmenkilled in excess of 2600. The RAF lost1017 aircraft. Luftwaffe losses havebeen given as 1882 aircraft.After the end of World War II,the 15th of September 1945 was designatedas the first "Battle of BritainDay." Three hundred RAF fighter aircrafttook part in a fly-past over centralLondon and ninety RAF stationswere opened to the public (the firsttime there had been any public accesssince the 1939 Empire Air Day).Thereafter, both the fly-past—alwaysled by the immortal Spitfire andMr. Hall is FH's Features EditorHurricane—and the open days becamean annual event although thenumber of participating aircraft andairfields was gradually reduced. In1959 the Spitfire taking part in the flypastdeveloped an engine fault andhad to make a forced landing on acricket ground in Bromley. There wasan outcry with a vociferous publicsafety lobby demanding that allflights by "ancient" single-enginedaircraft over densely populated areasshould be banned, countered by anequally vehement group arguing thatthey should be continued. Nevertheless,after the September 1961 "Battleof Britain Day" fly-past, the regularceremonial flight over central Londonwas discontinued and the RAF withdrewits then only remaining airworthySpitfire (PM 631) and Hurricane(LF 363) to form an Historic AircraftFlight based at Horsham St. Faith inNorfolk. The two aircraft continuedto make a limited number of appearancesat RAF open days around thecountry but by 1963 the number ofFINEST HOUR 96/40these had dropped to just fifteen.Aware that it was custodian ofpriceless, and hugely popular, piecesof national heritage—and also awarethat a single example of each aircrafttype provided no cover at all againstany kind of mishap—the RAF setabout increasing its stock of airworthyexamples. The cost of restoringhistoric aircraft featured high on thepolitical agenda during a periodwhen defence expenditure was constantlyunder scrutiny and the RAFwere able to make only slow and limitedprogress towards their objective.By 1965, however, the HistoricAircraft Flight had been boosted tofour Spitfires—but still only the singleHurricane—and was able toincrease its participation in air displaysthroughout the summermonths. A huge bonus arrived in 1968when Harry Saltzmam and Ben Fiszdecided to make their epic featurefilm, "Battle of Britain." The filmcompany paid handsomely to hire theRAF's five airworthy aircraft and also