The Battle of Britain was fought in 1940 largely over the skies of England with the Germans ultimately realising that losses were mounting up beyond the capacity to replenish them and air superiority was thus a distant dream that effectively put to bed any idea of conquering the country in at least the short term. Ever since, people of a certain age in this country – those born after the event – and with a certain political leaning – you know which way – have sought to stir up moments like this as banners behind which they can send others to march off and deliver another blow against the enemy, who hasn’t been an enemy for a long time, as a distraction for their own personal profiteering. See: Brexit. See: literally everything that the Tories or UKIP or Reform or whatever name they’ve picked to distance themselves behind this week from the latest exposure of corruption, racism, sexism, and whatever else do.
However, in 2015 there was at least some halfway decent reason to bring up the air fighter campaign over Britain from 1940 and if you’re good at subtracting numbers or reading post titles then you’ll have already worked out that it was the 75th anniversary of this period in time. September 2015 was therefore a time to thank those still alive who’d been there in the best British way possible – minting some coins, producing some jingoistic tat, sticking a Union Flag up in the window, that sort of thing – and part of that included a flypast of aircraft from the era.
At the time I was working in Chichester and this was part of the route that some planes flew over or practised flying over so at lunch one day I headed off to a suitable spot like many other people and waited for the drone of engines to fill the sky. Here then are some photos of the Battle of Britain 75th anniversary flypast in 2015 and I’m not going to pretend to tell you what the aircraft are. Sure, I can recognise the distinctive shape of a Spitfire and it’s very possible that there are Hurricanes here too but I’m not prepared to dig deeply into this to work it all out. If you like planes from the World War II era then you likely know what these are anyway.
