No second world war aircraft will participate in tribute flypasts marking the 80th anniversary of D-day next week after the crash of a Spitfire in Lincolnshire last weekend that killed its pilot.
The RAF said the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (BBMF) would continue to be grounded in its entirety because specialist crash investigators had not yet been unable to establish the cause of the accident that killed Sqn Ldr Mark Long.
A spokesperson for the air force said Air Chief Marshal Sir Rich Knighton had “decided to continue the pausing in flying” and that “regretfully BBMF aircraft are not expected to be able to participate in the forthcoming D-day commemorations”.
By and large they will not be replaced, although an A400M transport will conduct an additional flight over a ferry carrying D-day veterans from Portsmouth to France on Tuesday, and a Red Arrows display team will perform as planned on the anniversary itself, Thursday 6 June.
Spitfires and other second world war aircraft had been expected to fly over Southwick House in Hampshire, the allied headquarters on D-day, on Monday and again the following day when a handful of surviving veterans and others sail from Portsmouth across the Channel in a recreation of the 1944 invasion.
They were also due to fly over the British memorial in Ver-sur-Mer, Normandy, on Thursday, when King Charles is due to lead tributes to the soldiers under British command who participated in the biggest seaborne invasion in history and helped end the war.
Long, 43, was killed when the Spitfire he was flying crashed into a field shortly after takeoff at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire at about 1.20pm on Saturday, before it was due to take part in a display over the county.
RAF sources said on Friday that Long radioed a mayday distress call within moments of takeoff before the plane banked to the right and started to descend dangerously. Nothing else was heard from the pilot, an experienced aviator, before the plane crashed almost immediately after.
Specialists from the Defence Accident Investigation Branch are continuing to investigate the causes of the crash but because they have not determined its cause, the decision to ground all the vintage aircraft was taken on a precautionary basis.
The Battle of Britain flypast consisted of six Spitfires plus a Lancaster bomber, a C-47 Dakota transport, two Hurricane fighters and two de Havilland Chipmunk training aircraft. Senior RAF insiders said that because there were “commonalities” in the design and build of the aircraft, it could not be certain if the Spitfire crash reflected a serious flaw affecting all the planes.
No timeline has been given for the conclusion of the investigation, and the RAF said it could take days, weeks or months before the memorial aircraft would be deemed safe to fly again. That puts the participation of Spitfires and other wartime aircraft at displays to mark the king’s birthday in June and the British Grand Prix at Silverstone in July in jeopardy.
Long’s death is the first fatal accident in the history of the BBMF, which was founded in 1957 to keep alive the memory of the aircraft used during the second world war. More than 50 squadrons of Spitfires were involved on the first day of the invasion, adapted to conduct ground attacks on German forces in Normandy.
D-day involved 150,000 British, American and other allied soldiers landing on five beaches in Normandy, protected and ferried by 5,000 ships and aircraft as well as air forces from above. It was the start of the allied effort to retake France and helped lead to the end of the war in Europe less than a year later.
