A timless flight

As we mark 80 years since the Battle of Britain, we remember two of the Hampshire ‘Few’ who gave their lives to save others

- Malcolm Triggs

Eighty years on from one of the most important conflicts won by this country in the whole of the 20th century, new information continues to come to light about the men of the Royal Air Force who won the Battle of Britain.

As recently as last year, the Battle of Britain Memorial Trust added another name to the list of the fewer-than 3,000 who make up ‘the Few’ after accepting that Blenheim pilot Donald Brown, who flew with No 604 Squadron, qualified for the honour.

While it took eight decades to put right that omission, other errors have been corrected more swiftly, while new evidence continues to help the Trust and others build up a more accurate picture of the 1940 aerial battle that stopped Hitler’s planned invasion of this country.

For several decades, Hampshire man Frank Kinnersley Webster, whose family ran the Stag Hotel at Lake on the Isle of Wight, was thought to have died when his battle-damaged Spitfire caught fire after crashing as he attempted to land it on an airfield just inland from Dover’s iconic white cliffs.

It was not until the mid-eighties that this account of his death, supported by an official entry in the squadron’s operations record book (ORB), was questioned after the remains of the aircraft were excavated and examined.

Investigators discovered that the aircraft had buried itself 12 feet into the airfield at Hawkinge and been crushed by the impact, showing that it had in fact fallen from a great height.

Webster, who was born on 17 December 1917 to Elizabeth and Jasper Kinnersley Webster, achieved sporting success at Bedford Modern School and worked as a buyer before joining the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve (RAFVR) in about April 1939.