"Battle of Britain Memorial Flight"

In the years immediately following World War Two it became traditional for a Spitfire and Hurricane to lead the Victory Day flypast over London. From that event there grew the idea to form an historic collection of flyable aircraft, initially to commemorate the RAF's major battle honour, The Battle of Britain, and latterly with broadened scope, to commemorate the RAF's involvement in all the campaigns of WWII. Thus in 1957 the Historic Aircraft Flight was formed at Biggin Hill in what, even then, had become a predominantly jet-powered Air Force. As can be seen from the following chronology, the Flight experienced variable fortune before emerging in its current form as one of the world's best-known historic aircraft collections, maintaining in airworthy condition a Lancaster, a Dakota, five Spitfires, two Hurricanes and two Chipmunks.

Since its inception in 1957, the aircrew on the Flight have been drawn from volunteers, all of whom perform their primary duties on such front-line types as Typhoon, Tornado F3, Jaguarand Boeing E3D AWACs or on training aircraft such as the Dominie and Super King Air. The one exception is the Officer Commanding for whom the demands of overseeing operations, administration and engineering on the Flight dictate that he is employed full-time with the BBMF. In those tasks, and particularly in respect of display-related planning, the OC is assisted by a Retired Officer as the Flight's Operations Officer/Adjutant, an Operations Assistant and a civilian Administrative Assistant.

Official Website: http://www.deltaweb.co.uk/bbmf/home.html

2008 Battle of Britain Memorial Flight Display Calendar