RAF Kirton in Lindsey – Dambusters Film

I live just a few hundred yards off the end of runway 31 at Kirton – when washing the dishes and watching the gliders and tuggys of Trent Valley Gliding Club come over the house I often imagine the very long list of types which took the same path 70 years ago. However I’ve always been intrigued by the fact that in 1955-ish 3 Lancasters took off together on that same flightpath – in the film you can clearly see the formation of 3 bouncing over the grass runway and lifting off over the B1398 and old barn/farmhouse which is still there. Kirton was used during the film to replicate the grass runway which existed at Scampton in 1943.

I’m no pilot but can anyone out there tell me how difficult and risky this was? Look on Google and you’ll see the grass strip is fairly short anyway but what you can’t see unless you go to the start of runway 31 (looking northwest) is that’s it’s pretty lumpy and quite an uphill climb! I’ve often thought that the fighters and twins must have found this tricky during the war (Bader famously wrote a Spit off landing here at night and the graveyard at Kirton tells its own tale) but 3 Lancasters in formation must have been hairy to say the least, even allowing for the fact that the surface might have been slightly better in 1955?…….. Can’t imagine Health and Safety would allow it to be recreated this coming August!