TODAY is Battle of Britain Day when the memory of those who gave their all to save Britain from the Nazi threat is

particularly remembered. As a schoolboy at Prince Henry's Grammar School,

Evesham, historian Michael J Barnard can remember fighter planes flying overhead on their way to the battle and he told reporter Gerry Barnett about the only

surviving Spitfire from the Battle of

Britain still flying.

Spitfire P7350 (Mk 11a), he said, was one of 11,989 built at Birmingham's Castle Bromwich shadow factory. She had a distinguished wartime career serving with 266, 603 squadrons during the Battle of Britain and ending her operational career with 19MU maintenance unit.

She now had the distinction of being the oldest airworthy Spitfire in the world and the only surviving Spitfire of the Battle of Britain still flying.

"To be able to fly a Spitfire - one can only dream of this - a schoolboy's dream maybe," Mr Barnard said, "but it was the summer of 1940 that 18 and 19-year-old boys were to fly this aircraft, coming from all walks of life, some from University squadrons and many from overseas."

The warm 1940 summer was of day after day of cloudless skies and it was in those skies that the Spitfires and Hurricanes of RAF Fighter Command defended the homeland against the might of the German Lutwaffe.

The Battle began in early July 1940 and raged on throughout the summer, but it was the action fought on September 15, that was to prove the decisive battle, Mr Barnard said. Some 250 Spitfires and Hurricanes engaged the enemy formations on that day which led to the postponement of all plans to invade by the German High Command.

Fighter Command lost over 900 aircraft and 344 pilots. The Roll of Honour of the pilots along with the names of 718 aircrew of Bomber Command and 280 of Coastal Command are engraved on the Battle of Britain Memorial in Westminster Abbey.

"A Vale of Evesham roadside field or meadow bordered by the majestic elm tree is just a memory," said Mr Barnard. "No longer do the lengthening shadows cast from those beautiful trees fall on the busy haymakers working flat out to gather the last bales of the day before the thunderstorms threaten the night time hours."

Mr Barnard's sketch shows P7 flying over such a scene in Badsey in the 1940s, on its way to join a Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, just a matter of leaving the past to join the future all in one picture.

Battle of Britain Day, celebrated annually on September 15, was the day when the sound of a Merlin engine meant so much to so many people.

On July 10, 1947, King George VI unveiled the Battle of Britain Memorial in Westminster Abbey. Beneath the Memorial Window is the quotation from Shakespeare: "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers."