The skies over the UK in WW2 air raids and dogfights

Daytime dogfights in the Battle of Britain

Little did I appreciate the stress and strain of our Spitfire and Hurricane pilots in the sky above me, locked in deadly combat with their enemies. It would only be when there was a momentary burst of gunfire from one of the planes that my schoolboy friends and I would leap from our bikes and run. Then we did appreciate something of the terrible danger these great RAF heroes were in. The occasional vapour trail left by a plane in the clear blue skies above our heads, the flash of sunlight from some part of one of the many planes, twisting and turning in and away from one another. It was like some macabre aerial ballet. Quite beautiful, but totally deadly.

Dick Hibberd

Where my family lived in Orpington, Kent, we were on the flight path from Germany to London. Biggin Hill Aero­drome was also nearby. So we were very much affected by air raids. I remember being fascinated by the dogfights between the fighter planes in the skies above us. I knew no fear and no appreciation of what our pilots were doing for us. That came later as I grew up.

Geoff Copus

During an air raid, particularly the one on Coventry, the night sky glowed orange and red. Down below looked like a giant bubble bath from the shock waves from the bombs and shells exploding.

Stan Clark

The barrage balloons were raised high during air raids so as to provide obstacles for the German bombers. Being filled with hydrogen, which is highly flammable, they burst into flames mid-air when hit, which looked very strange, although of course beautiful. Today's firework displays were nothing on this!

Doris Clarke

When a bomb went through the top of one of the gasometers in the gasworks along Angel Road, Edmonton, the flames shot several hundreds of feet up into the air. The pitch dark of the blackout was no longer, what with these flames, the searchlights and flashes, etc.

John Cole

As I was born in 1937, I was still quite young during the worst of the air raids. Even so, I remember, one night my father holding me up to the windows during the blackout, and everywhere around, including the clouds, was a red glow where the bombs and aircraft had exploded.

Tom Wallace

Sometimes my father would 'take me up' - i.e. out of our Anderson shelter - to see what was going on above us. We often used to stand behind the shelter's blast wall, watching all the planes, the 'tracer' bullets, searchlights in the sky and general hubbub. I think that the 'tracer' bullets got their name because they somehow glowed enabling our gunners to see the trajectories and thus trace and refine their aim.

John Cole

My father took me out into the garden to see great numbers of German planes flying overhead. This was in Great Shelford, near Cambridge and there was speculation that the planes were on their way to bomb Coventry. There must have been hundreds of them, in formation of fours as I seem to remember.

Neil Cryer

I vividly remember passing days in 1940 in my grandmother's back garden, in glorious weather, watching the aeroplanes above, weaving, turning and fighting each other in the sustained air campaign known as the Battle of Britain. I seem to remember that our planes were silver and the enemy's were black, but that may have been childhood fantasy. Anyway, ours won - thank God!

John Cole