The RAF's display team colour the skies above London red, white and blue to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day. Nazi commanders surrendered to allied forces in a French schoolhouse 75 years ago on 8 May 1945, bringing the second world war in Europe to an end.
Boris Johnson urges nation to unite in tribute as celebrations are adapted owing to Covid-19
RAF jets will roar over Britain to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day, as Boris Johnson urged the nation to unite in tribute to the achievement and sacrifice of the wartime generation.
The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall will lead a two-minute silence from Scotland on a day of celebration and commemoration which also includes a “national toast”, an address by the Queen, and a nationwide sing-a-long of Vera Lynn’s We’ll Meet Again.
Continue reading... Family of motorcyclist killed near US base to receive crucial papers after seeking review
Lawyers representing the family of 19-year-old motorcyclist Harry Dunn are poised to receive a series of crucial documents which they believe will help their legal case to expose a “scandalous cover-up” by the Foreign Office.
The development comes after documents showed that a senior Foreign Office diplomat had sent a text message to a US Embassy counterpart saying they should “feel able” to put suspect Anne Sacoolas on the next flight back to the States.
Continue reading...Frederick Forsyth (Buried for 50 years: Britain’s shameful role in Biafra, Journal, 21 January) arrived in Biafra shortly after I was evacuated in June 1967 at the start of the war, just 15 miles north of Nsukka, where I was working as a university lecturer.
No account of the Biafran war should ignore its origins in a mainly Igbo military coup in January 1966, a coup in which three Nigerian political leaders were assassinated (none of them Igbo). Among them was a man who, by popular accounts, was a modest and good politician: the prime minister, Tafawa Balewa.
Continue reading...Typhoon jets scrambled in response to plane that was not answering air traffic control
A huge bang heard across London and in Hertfordshire just after 4am on Sunday was caused by RAF jets going supersonic, the Met and the MoD said.
“Two Typhoon fighter aircraft from RAF Coningsby were scrambled at 0409 this morning, as part of the UK’s Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) procedures, after an aircraft lost communications in UK airspace,” said the Ministry of Defence. “The aircraft was intercepted and its communications were subsequently re-established. The Typhoons are returning to their base.”
Continue reading...Oswald Dixon served in RAF in second world war and died at care home in Salford
A care home is inviting members of the public to attend the funeral of a second world war veteran from Jamaica with no family in the UK.
Oswald Dixon died on 25 September aged 100 after living his last four years at a home for retired service personnel in Salford, Greater Manchester.
Continue reading...RAF says 4,315 Isis fighters were killed or injured in airstrikes and just one civilian
The Ministry of Defence claim that the RAF killed only one civilian in thousands of airstrikes against Isis has been dismissed as ludicrous and “stretching credibility”.
According figures released by the MoD following a freedom of information request by the charity Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), the RAF strikes between 2014 and January this year killed or injured 4,315 of the group’s fighters. It said 90% of those were killed.
Continue reading...Wartime aircraft will fly in 6 June event commemorating day that turned tide of war
The skies over the UK and Normandy will be filled with wartime Dakota aircraft as hundreds of parachutists take part in a mass airdrop to mark the 75th anniversary of the D-day landings in June.
The plans, unveiled by Imperial War Museums (IWM), are part of a programme on an “unprecedented scale” for the commemoration of the greatest seaborne invasion in history, to liberate Europe from Nazi occupation, on 6 June 1944.
Continue reading...My father, Brian Grace, who has died aged 88, overcame early disadvantages to forge a life revolving around his family, his work as an engineering inspector, and the betting shop – not always in that order.
The son of Fred Grace, a bus driver with London Transport, and Lillian (nee Turpin), an advertising model, Brian was born in Battersea, south-west London, with disabilities that required a series of operations on his leg and foot.
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