Lancaster internal tour prize winner
Header Image: Julie Lane (right), the Club member who won this year’s special ‘money cannot buy it’ ballot prize of an internal tour of the BBMF Lancaster, with her father, just before they climbed into Lancaster PA474 on 24th July. (All photos: Clive Rowley)
Club member Julie Lane from Essex was the winner of this year’s special ‘money cannot buy it’ ballot prize of an internal tour of the BBMF Lancaster. She took up the prize on 24th July and brought along her father who had served in the RAF for nine years as an air traffic control assistant.
Despite the 24th July having become the day of the Royal Visit by HM King Charles III to the BBMF, and with the BBMF Visitor Centre being closed to the public that day, Julie and her father were still allowed special access to the BBMF hangar and the Lancaster, with preparations going on in the hangar for the veterans’ tea party and the Royal Visit later that day.
Ex-OC BBMF and the Club’s publications editor, Clive Rowley, hosted the internal Lancaster tour, and started by giving Julie and her father a detailed explanation of the Lancaster from the outside, before escorting them inside the big bomber. It is quite an obstacle course inside, clambering under the mid-upper turret, up onto the bomb bay with two steps and then over the wing spars to get access to the cockpit. Despite this, Julie made it to the cockpit and took the opportunity to take it all in and to take plenty of photographs on her phone. It was unusual to be able to tell her that the next person to climb inside the Lancaster would be The King!
After exiting the Lancaster and on the way back down the hangar, Clive explained some of the details of the Spitfires and Hurricanes arranged down the side, in preparation for The King’s visit. It was also nice to find Julie’s nephew (her father’s grandson), Corporal ‘Penny’ Lane, who is a technician on the BBMF, now coming up to the end of a four-year tour with the Flight and posted away in October. We took a photo of the three of them with BBMF Chipmunk T10 WG486, which bears the name ‘CPL M LANE’ under the cockpit on the starboard side. He explained that he wasn’t allowed to be ‘CPL P LANE’, using the initial of his RAF nickname, because, as you can see, it would look like “CPL PLANE”!
We hope to be able to offer another internal Lancaster tour ballot prize in 2024 for another lucky Club member to win.
