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Terry Clark at RAF Linton. Picture: Matt Clark

A VETERAN of the Battle of Britain has returned to meet the next generation of RAF pilots ahead of the service's 90th birthday celebrations.

Terry Clark, 88, is believed to be the last Battle of Britain flyer in Yorkshire - one of "The Few" from Churchill's famous speech: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

The former air-gunner, who lives in Wheldrake, visited RAF Linton-on-Ouse to compare life in the service today with that of 1940.

Mr Clark said: "During the Battle of Britain, I was an air-gunner on Blenheims based at Catterick airfield, near Northallerton. Mine was both a day and a night-fighter squadron and I remember cold nights spent on a damp concrete floor as we waited for the word scramble'.

"All we had was a small blanket to keep us warm, but they used to keep us going with six-inch thick sandwiches as we whiled away the time playing cards.

"We always played cards and none of us used the night-flying glasses we were issued with because they changed the way your eyes worked. We wouldn't have been able to see the cards, and that would never have done.

"When we got airborne we were always under the control of GCI (Ground Control Intercept).

"Plotters received information about inbound aircraft from radars all around the coast.

"Then they would move models to the position given. That allowed the ops officer to see what was happening and where to direct his fighters."

Six decades on, the same concept remains. Typhoons on high alert are still directed by ground controllers, although other aircraft can receive instructions from the airborne AWACS.

Mr Clark never considered joining up until he saw a recruitment poster for the RAF in 1938.

He said: "I had visions of becoming a dashing young man with the wind blowing my silk scarf as we sped along but it suddenly occurred to me that I had never flown. What if I didn't like it?

"In those days you could take ten shilling air experience flights, so I booked a ticket and was immediately hooked, I loved every minute and on touchdown thought this is for me'."

Like the RAF, Mr Clark's birthday is in April.

"I will be 89 then," he said. "What a shame I couldn't have been born a year earlier, then we could have celebrated our 90th together."

In York, the RAF's 90th anniversary will be marked by a formation of nine Tucanos from RAF Linton-on-Ouse, which will fly over the Minster at 11.50am next Tuesday, before the Turning of the Page ceremony at the Book of Remembrance.

3:58pm Thursday 27th March 2008

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