OUT AND ABOUT The museum’s mission is ‘Inspiring generations, remembering the Few and honouring the Many’.
New museum honours wartime pilots
A new museum has opened it doors to pay tribute to WWII flying aces and tell the story of Biggin Hill airfield and the brave airmen and ground crews who served there
RAF Biggin Hill was originally founded in 1917 to be used by the Royal Flying Corps in WWI. It then played a pivotal role in the Battle of Britain which was fought over the skies of Kent and the South East. Biggin Hill Memorial Museum opened on February 2 and brings this history to life through exhibitions, storytelling, film, collections of letters and wartime objects. Spitfires and Hurricanes were based there and 454 pilots were killed flying from RAF Biggin Hill during WWII. It was part of a chain of airfields that protected the capital, described by Winston Churchill as ‘the strongest link’. Because of its strategic importance, the airfield itself became a target for enemy attack, with 39 people killed on the ground. The museum is built around the St. George’s RAF Chapel of Remembrance, grade-II listed and
built in 1951, very close to the modern day Biggin Hill Airport. Items on display include a 50kg bomb (deactivated!), a table from a local pub with fighter pilots’ names carved into the wood, an escape crowbar for a Spitfire, fragments of pilots’
maps, compasses, uniforms and flying jackets. Many of the objects are personal and have been donated by people who served or lived at Britain’s most famous fighter station. A child’s gas mask and box brings back the reality of a child living through the threat of gas and enemy attack. Historian Dan Snow provides the museum’s audio commentary, along with veterans including the late Geoffrey Wellum (the youngest Spitfire pilot to fly in the Battle of Britain at just 19 years old).
Biggin Hill Memorial Museum is at Main Road, Biggin Hill, Kent, TN16 3EJ. For more details visit www.bhmm.org.uk
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