NEWS that the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight will stage a flypast over Wellington Carnival Street Fair this summer prompted memories for John Andrews, one of the driving forces behind celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of VE-Day in the town.

The memorial flight – made up of a Spitfire and Hurricane fighter planes, and a Lancaster bomber – are scheduled to fly over the street fair on Sunday, June 3, in a major coup for the town.

The VE-Day celebrations were covered in the WWN of May 16, 1995, and it was reported that 10,000 spectators turned out to see a march past of Second World War veterans, a parade of 1940s-style carnival floats and vintage vehicles, and a flypast of wartime planes.

The WWN reported: “Just after the sounding of siren at 11am last Monday, modern jets and then a Hercules plane roared over the town centre right on cue, followed around the streets by a wartime fire engine.

“Pride of place in the historic flypast went to a famous Spitfire and later in the day a Firefly, a naval version of the celebrated Battle of Britain fighters, performed a series of aerial manoeuvres over the town.

“The strong winds meant that the planned massed flypast could not be held as many of the delicate vintage aircraft could not take off from Exeter Airport, but in all about 30 flew over Wellington during the afternoon, including a biplane, eight wartime Pipers in a ‘V’ formation and two power gliders.”

A colourful and noisy finale included fireworks supplied by the WWN.

Mr Andrews, a former builders’ merchant, among other roles, who now lives at West Buckland, was a member of Wellington Promotion Forum at the time of the VE-Day anniversary celebration. He said then: “It was absolutely brilliant. Everything went like clockwork. We couldn’t have done it better if we had tried. People really enjoyed themselves and there was a real community atmosphere.

“The march past in the morning was a very moving occasion. Quite a number of those taking part had tears in their eyes, as did the spectators.”