I have to say that I can see that point of view clearly enough. I too read War Picture Library and Commando. Don’t actually recall being taught Battle of Britain history at any point and I took the subject up to A level in 1978. My O level course included the Second World War and individual battles only got a fleeting mention. My real enthusiasm came about through my father’s being in the RAF and therefore I got occasional privileged access to matters aviation. I recall very clearly the impact the BofB movie had at my primary school. For days the playground was a mass of whirling Messerschmitt and Spitfire boys and woe betide any girl who got herself tangled up in a dogfight!
Really, even though I went to school with boys whose fathers had served in the RAF during the war and often enough attended schools on RAF bases, the Battle was not a part of the curriculum. It was just ‘there’, as part of the national consciousness. It had only happened twenty five years before, less time than has now elapsed since the Falklands War.

Serpently is. That’s the fun of it! ( Mrs Meteor doesn’t get this!).

As I recall the ‘give a squadron of Spitfires’ remark was indeed a dig at a subsequently apoplectic Goering. The latter had just asked if there was anything, anything at all, that he could get that would enable them to do their jobs. Galland himself always said that the 109 was his fighter of choice for close combat.

Agree with you, Charlie.
It’s still, (mostly), a free country, so I live and let live, but to a degree there is in me a sense of resentment that I have coughed up the hard earned to see the show while others haven’t. I know my own views but life’s too short to get steamed up over it. End of the day, I have the small satisfaction of knowing that my funds have made a tiny contribution to what I enjoy seeing.

I think that would be Martin Sargeant back in June 2001? Didn’t he have an engine failure at an air display in France and then found the emergency strip to have spectators on it? It was while he was attempting to re- position that he went in.
Not, I think, freeloaders but poor crowd control. Still, one gets the principle.
On a lighter note I was at Old Warden years and years ago when a Sea Harrier reversed beautifully right over the heads of the rubberneckers on the lane outside the airfield. Boy, did they scatter! And most of them didn’t come back. Would love to think the pilot did it on purpose.

I have to agree. At my place of (local govt) employment it us vital to be seen doing the right thing, for all sorts of ridiculous reasons. Mind you, did chuckle the day I was accosted by a concerned lady of middle years who wanted to know who had died – the flag outside was at half mast. After a thorough berating because I did not know I was able to inform her that no-one had; the flag pole was broken!

I kind of agree without quite knowing why; all these memorials (and please don’t start me on the roadside bouquets!), make me vaguely and politically incorrectly, uncomfortable. And why, I wonder, is it that the Government will ensure funding for this kind of thing but require the public to bust a gut in raising funds for a military one?

Touche! Walked right into that.