Wartime heroes back in hot seat
• Wing Commander Jim Flint is reunited with a wartime Lancaster bomber at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire yesterday. Picture:PA
With their medals pinned to their lapels, the eight veterans, who would have made up a full crew on the bomber, met at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire.
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Hide AdAfter posing for photographs in front of the four-engined bomber, the veterans stepped inside the plane where they spent night after night dodging enemy fire while flying sorties over Nazi-occupied Europe.
Flight Sergeant Jim McGillivay, 84, sat in his seat as a rear gunner for the first time in 65 years, while Flight Lieutenant Tom Payne, 86, took to the controls of the bomber.
Mr McGillivay, from Essex, said: "When you get in, it's feet first, like slipping a cork into a bottle. I am little bit fatter now because I was 18 then.
"Back then it was frightening but once the aircraft took off, you had to get on with it and do your job."