Don’t Just Stand There, Get One Up! 

“Don’t just stand there, get one up!”

That’s a line from the movie Battle of Britain. The squadron leader is running to his plane and shouts at a young pilot standing transfixed by the drama around him.

When I walk into the lounge area of Fly A Spitfire, this quote is rather conspicuously written on the wall.  Also on the wall are the photos of pilots who flew Hurricanes and Spitfires out of Biggin Hill during the Battle of Britain.  

Biggin Hill is south east of London and is where green fields and little villages begin, an air base during the Battle of Britain and bombed by the Luftwaffe but these days the only invading forces are celebrities who use the field to land private jets.  

Fly A Spitfire’s hanger is filled with aircraft that can take to the air or are dreaming of flying again.  There’s a Hurricane, Kittyhawk, Messerschmitt 109 and jeeps used in the movie Fury, paratrooper scooters and more than I know I’ll have time to look at.  There’s a smell too.  It’s the smell of engine oil and hot engine parts as they’re fired up for testing. It’s not a museum smell.  This is the smell of aircraft that are alive and just waiting their turn to fly.

I’m of a generation whose parents’ heroes weren’t from the Marvel Universe, they were the servicemen who fought and died in two world wars.  

To go up in a spitfire you don’t need the courage of flying aces that flew out of Biggin Hill, but you do need to pass a test with a level of self-confidence that only you can judge is right for you.  The bail out procedure is an online familiarisation instruction, and it’s a preflight video, then you demonstrate it to the flight crew when you’re in the cockpit.  It’s an understanding of how to lower your seat, slide back the canopy, bang open the cockpit side door and jump out with a static line parachute and if that fails, how to pull a D-ring to open the parachute.  

Sitting in the cockpit was my first understanding that this is a fighter aircraft that is more than 80 years old.  I’m surrounded by rivets and cables that are functional and represent what makes this machine fly fast and with great manoeuvrability.

Then there’s a roar that carries with it more than noise; it’s a tangible, visceral, immersive wave that sweeps through you and with it comes the smell of the Merlin engine.  I’m soaked in the smell, I’m shaking with the aircrafts impatience to get into the sky and in the words of ‘High Flight’, the wonderful poem by Spitfire pilot, John Gillespie, I just want to ‘join the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds’. We’re ready to go!

And when I say ‘we’re’, there’s something else about this experience.  I’ve brought my son Tom with me to have his own adventure. He’s going up in the chase plane to enjoy looking at the fields of Kent before being shot down by me in fast flybys.

Taking off is thrilling, the absolute core of my bucket list that in reality I never thought I’d achieve.  I’m in the air, gaining height, the wheels are up and I’m bursting every muscle on my face with a smile from ear to ear.

I look down at the remarkable elliptical wing of this aircraft that make it so famous and identifiable.  This experience is about the aircraft itself.  Another of my Spitfire influences is a book called, ‘Sigh For A Merlin’, by Spitfire test pilot Alex Henshaw who says throughout his experiences the Spitfire was easy to fly.  Now it’s time to see if he’s right.

Watching the go-pro footage after my flight, I expected to see how happy I was but watching me take the controls was different.  My face looks like I’m doing an Algebra test.  I’m focused on the horizon to keep level flight and then slowly banking to search for my son in the chase plane.  I wish I’d relaxed for these moments and looked around me but maybe that’s what learning to fly an aircraft designed for flying to fight is all about, learning to trust that this perfect design will perfectly respond.

There’s extra time for my flight because of some private jet traffic so there’s more victory rolls and banking the aircraft on its wingtip.  Victory rolls by exuberant pilots were frowned upon during wartime because of the stress on battle weary airframes but gosh they’re fun! The delirious blue sky rolls its way from the top of your vision to the bottom and then back in its rightful place at the top, along with my stomach. 

The sensation of speed is achieved as I fly past the chase plane and it looks like it’s standing still in mid air. Tom captures some amazing moments of my flight, including the Spitfire close alongside and then banking and descending and becoming camouflaged with the fields below.

I’ve told friends, and now you, that I cried in the air because I wish my dad was here to see this.  Then I cried because I’m here with my son. 

On the ground and with the engine still, I slide the canopy back and, as the flight crew disconnect the cameras, they capture a final moment of my face and audio as they ask, “Old man would have proud of that I bet?”, to which I just reply: “Yeah”.

Double cockpit Spitfires are rare to find and you have to go a long way to do it.  While there are a few groups in England that offer the experience of a flight in a Spitfire, for me the passionate flight crew, historic setting with a hanger full of epic and iconic heritage and the opportunity to make it a shared experience with a better man than I make this literally the experience of my lifetime.