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Three gentlemen from Groby visit a lady
David Bailey, George Thorogood and I had jointly decided on a 7-15 am start to arrive at our venue in Lincolnshire to meet Jane at the appointed nine hundred hours. Jane is a lady and needs time to warm up in the morning before receiving visitors. She has to be dragged out of her bedroom, as she doesn’t like moving herself until she is in the open air. However when she does move herself the air and ground vibrates and woe betide any one who gets behind her as she can generate a powerful slipstream.
“Just Jane” is NX611, a Lancaster Bomber, named after the wartime cartoon strip which featured in the Daily Mirror. She is beautiful, very powerful and unique. She is the only surviving Second World War Lancaster Bomber able to give a taxiing experience on a wartime airfield anywhere in the world. She is the most accurate and complete survivor of any of the eight left in the world. There are two others in museums in this country and one with the RAF Memorial flight but they can only be admired from a distance.
She is a living memorial to the 79,281 air crew who gave their lives during the Second World War, so that we may live in freedom. The crews were all volunteers and mostly 19 to 20 years old. They knew that the survival rate was only one in three to complete the 30 operations which comprised a tour. On average, a new Lancaster could only expect 40 hours flying time before being lost. We read accounts of survivors experiences but no book or film can convey the cramped interior and the obstacles encountered just moving from the rear gun turret up to the cockpit. To enter the rear turret you slide in feet first and with the aircraft stationary it is downhill, you enter rather quickly. In normal summer wear it is difficult enough but imagine yourself trying to abandon the aircraft. It is dark, you are wearing a bulky flying suit, a parachute clipped to your chest which you had to clip to you after you had left your position, probably hydraulic oil from damaged pipes coating everything. Now add to that the damaged aircraft rolling over and over with you trying to make for the exits as you yourself are rolled over and over. It was almost impossible to get out. A flight engineer from the war, in the aircraft with us, told us that he only escaped from a Lancaster when it exploded and he was blown out to parachute safely into German captivity. He joined the RAF at 19 and was shot down when 20. He was the only survivor. Many visitors had come to relive their wartime memories, one was blind and could only stand in the mid upper gun position but he could hear and feel the vibrations, sad memories I’m sure. They had all volunteered as aircrew, brave men indeed.
The aircraft was purchased by the Panton brothers as a memorial to their brother who lost his life in a Halifax bomber. After the war, as farmers and owners of East Kirkby wartime airfield they had the land on which to erect a hangar to keep an aircraft. The aircrafts full history of survival is too long to explain fully here but briefly she was prepared for Tiger force to help in the war with Japan. Japan surrendered and she was sold to the French Naval Air Arm. She was later donated by the French to an English aircraft preservation society but they had to bring her home. After hair raising experiences and 70 hours flying she landed at Biggin Hill, Kent. The expense was too great for the group so she eventually ended up at Blackpool and was later due to be scrapped. She was put up for auction but failed to reach the reserve price. Two days later a private sale was concluded and the aircraft was purchased by Lord Lilford and placed on display as a gate guardian at RAF Scampton. Lord Lilford promised the brothers that should he sell, then they would have first refusal. He kept his word and on 1st September 1983 the brothers owned NX611. They had no plans to form a museum but eventually a collection of rare aeronautical exhibits began to form which now has grown into a sizeable museum: “The Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage centre”. The complex features an excellent restaurant and shop, the control tower which has survived intact and is completely fitted out with original equipment. Male and female mannequins dressed in correct RAF uniforms portray a busy tower guiding aircraft home after a raid on Germany. The radio chatter to and from returning aircraft completes the illusion. Outside an anti-aircraft gun is mounted ready to repel air borne intruders. Camouflaged buildings complete the atmosphere with authentic RAF vehicles around the site.
Most moving is the recreated chapel, a place for quiet remembrance which holds the names of the 848 aircrew that lost their lives from this base 1943 – 1945.
The Lancaster experience starts immediately we arrive, first receiving a warm greeting from granddaughter Louise Panton, a pretty young lady who checks our paper work and identity cards. After a welcome coffee we have time to watch “Just Jane” slowly emerging from her hangar, pulled by a tractor. Aircraft enthusiasts are familiar with Lancasters but I don’t think many are prepared for her size and height as she emerges into daylight. She is black with camouflaged top surfaces and she has guns protruding from turrets, ammunition at the ready. Visitors just stand in quiet reflection. She is immaculate.
We are startled suddenly by the tannoy announcing our preparation for the day’s events. We are to have a lecture by Louise and a crew member on the history of the Lancaster NX611 in the Naafi building followed by a serious talk on health and safety, reminding us that this is a wartime aircraft where the job came first and the men second. Watch your feet and you bump your head, watch your head and you trip over something. If you are not agile you cannot climb over the main spar which is three feet high, then the flap jack just beyond which operates the wing flaps. Every thing is big and in the way, this is a war machine. Space and head room is restricted because of the huge bomb bay which the aircraft is designed around. The bomb bay is the largest of any British aircraft of the second world war, it runs from under the pilot’s feet to nearly the mid upper gun turret. It also extends halfway up into the fuselage which accounts for the lack of head room.
There are two runs, morning and after lunch. We are in the later one, the three of us all together. Excitement mounts as a fire engine draws close to Jane as visitors are warned not to get behind her. A member of the ground crew climbs on to her left hand main wheel and disappears into the wheel bay dragging a power cable. This is the ground electric feed so she doesn’t drain her own batteries. A ground crew holds up three fingers, the pilot acknowledges and engine number three (the inner right hand one) gives a cough and the huge propeller starts to rotate, more coughing then all twelve exhausts spurt fire and smoke. Engine speed picks up, the propeller is now a blur. One by one all four engines follow suit and the fire crew retreat as the engines staccato roar makes the ground vibrate and children cover their ears. Chocks are removed from the wheels and she moves slowly forward towards the airfield. She requires very little power to move forward. She is now in her element, moving as she was designed to do.
After an excellent lunch it is our turn to enter NX611 up a short ladder to a door in the right hand side, turn left to the rear turret, turn right uphill to the cockpit. We sat in the wireless operator’s position, just room for three with the main spar to our backs. A small window on both sides gave us an excellent view over the merlin engines. The noise was deafening. Imagine this on an eight hour trip in freezing cold, dark, and being shot at, no armour plating to protect you, just paper thin aluminium and no insulation.
After the run we were free to inspect all the crew positions. We all sat in the pilot’s seat to feel the control column which was amazingly light and responsive. The pilot was in the cockpit to answer the many questions. To air enthusiasts this was a dream come true.
Always in our minds was the price paid by all the young men that never returned, seven men to each bomber. Ten aircraft could be lost in one night to one base, seventy men lost.
“Due to them, and their kind in other Services, that Britain today is not a slave market in a Nazi Empire. That was the Plan”. The words of Sir Arthur Harris, Bt GCB, OBE AFC, LLD.
Ground running a Lancaster as a living exhibit is a very expensive exercise to maintain. Nine to ten persons are allowed aboard per trip, so booking is essential and many months of waiting are to be expected. You can contact Louise on 01790 763207 or write to Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre, The Airfield, East Kirkby, Spilsby, Lincs. PE23 4DE.
This article written by guest contributor W.John Thornton was first published in the Groby Spotlight in 2008