Duxford Battle of Britain Air Show: Reunited with an old family friend, B-17 Flying Fortress Sally B

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by flight. Even now, just driving past Stansted Airport fills me with awe as aircraft soar into the sky.

My dad did lots of building work there and the wartime Nissen huts of the north side were a familiar sight to me and my siblings in the 1970s.

At weekends, he would drive us to the perimeter for more plane spotting. Sometimes, I was allowed to skip school, climb into his truck and go with him to RAF Chicksands, then an American air base during the Cold War. As a small child, it was a real adventure.

As I got older, my younger brother Sean, who was obsessed with aircraft, took my place in the truck, and when dad was working at Duxford, Sean was taken to see Sally B – a B-17 Flying Fortress which was being restored.

The great moment he was allowed to climb into the bomb hold was recorded in a photograph, which was a fixture of my parents’ home from then on.

Sally B arrived at Duxford in 1975 and is now the last remaining airworthy B-17 in Europe and firmly fixed in the public consciousness for her starring role in Memphis Belle, the 1990 British-American war film starring Matthew Modine, Eric Stoltz and Harry Connick Junior.

The privately-owned aircraft is also a fixture of air displays and flypasts, but she was grounded as the 2023 flying season began when the United States Federal Aviation Administration issued an alert about wing spar issues on all airworthy B-17s.

Thankfully, she passed checks in time to appear at the Duxford Summer Air Show in June and was back in action at the weekend (September 16-17).

As a family in the 1970s, the ultimate treat for us was to go to a Little Chef for a Jubilee pancake, but a trip to an air show came a close second. A combination of the two was truly a red-letter day.

After a gap of more than four decades, how would my first air show as an adult measure up to that memory? Duxford Battle of Britain Air Show on Saturday (September 16) did not disappoint.

Sally B was there, and as the bomber’s four engines began roaring on the runway, that sense of amazement that something so large, so heavy and so apparently cumbersome could leave the ground returned.

And, of course, she did take to the air, defying gravity but not physics, to gracefully head into the clouds with a Royal Air Force Battle of Britain Memorial Flight Lancaster.

During the Second World War, the B-17 primarily carried out daytime missions while the British aircraft was principally a night-time bomber. Together, they were a spectacular sight and a reminder of the many men, women and children – military and civilian – who lost their lives between 1939 and 1945.

Although the show featured earlier aircraft – the biplanes and triplanes that brought the art of dogfighting to the First World War – it was the fighters of the last global conflict that caught my imagination.

Somehow, I still perceive that war as being 50 years ago, but of course it’s not. Few of those who fought are still alive and so it is these magnificent machines that keep us connected to their sacrifice.

It almost defies belief that skilled engineers are able to keep these aircraft – now eight decades old and more – airborne.

Not for the first time, I reflected on the courage of the original test pilots and the daring of the aviators who followed. For me, every take-off is a test of optimism – and they were flying for freedom, not a foreign jaunt.

In keeping with the show’s theme, the finale was 14 Spitfires and three Hurricanes flying as a Big Wing – an aerial combat tactic introduced during the Battle of Britain.

The older and often overlooked Hurricanes are my favourites, not least because while the graceful Spitfires grabbed the headlines and have become a symbol of the Second World War, more than half of the nearly 1,200 German aircraft shot down during the battle were by Hawker Hurricanes.

They were the first RAF aircraft to fly over 300mph. In contrast, the Hawk jets used by the Red Arrows have a maximum speed of 645mph.

The elite RAF team, flying an eight-ship rather than the usual nine, put on a spectacular show for the crowd at Duxford, completing a series of complex manoeuvres including the breathtaking tornado, writing across the sky with red, white and blue smoke plumes.

With the museum open as usual, a host of characters recreating wartime scenes and live music evoking the sounds of the 1940s, the whole day was a thought-provoking experience rather than a rose-tinted trip down memory lane – and my childlike wonder at flying remains intact.

All pictures by Gerred Gilronan