The Heroes of Biggin Hill, Yesterday

Heroes of Biggin Hill differed from other specimens of the Battle of Britain genre by focusing on a location rather than on strategy or merely the heroics of the flyers. The plan was to highlight the role played by Biggin Hill airfield in Kent, a pivotal location for Fighter Command during the battle as both an operations centre and key front line airfield (and it was only three miles from Winston Churchill’s home at Chartwell). According to one historical account, “there are squadrons as proud of having fought from here as regiments in the Army are of having Blenheim and Alamein emblazoned on their colours.” But as well as talking to veteran pilots, the film also tracked down surviving residents of Biggin Hill village and the surrounding area, and made a point of including the experiences of other ranks and WAAFs engaged in the conflict (Biggin Hill airfield from the air, pictured below).

Not that the pub was a fail-safe bolthole, as local resident Norman Blundell discovered. Out for a pint at the Kings Arms with his father one Sunday morning, they were caught in a German surprise attack which peppered the airfield with bombs and also destroyed the pub (Blundell’s father lost a leg). Meanwhile WAAF Corporal Elspeth Henderson, despite being knocked down by a bomb blast, methodically walked around the stricken aerodrome marking unexploded bombs with red flags, so that the returning RAF aircraft, one of them flown by her boyfriend, would be able to avoid them. She was awarded a Military Medal, one of three won by women serving at Biggin Hill during August 1940 (Fighter Command operations room during the Battle of Britain, pictured below).

Although Biggin Hill was smack in the middle of what became known as Hell’s Corner, an area of south-east England under continuous German air attack, there was still a glimmer of sympathy for the enemy. Geoff Greensmith, then aged six, remembered meeting a wounded German pilot who’d landed by parachute in his garden. He produced some photographs of his two childen, and burst into tears. “He was just like us, and like a kid he could cry,” Greensmith concluded.

Despite the air raids and the casualties, most of those involved looked back on the battle as an epic and unrepeatable event, like nothing they would ever experience again. Congratulations to the film-makers, incidentally, on using authentic archive film and photos instead of trying to fob viewers off with extracts from the Battle of Britain movie, a deplorable and all too common trick.

• theartsdesk review of The Untold Battle of Britain

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