Jubilant Spitfire!!

Sunday 3rd August

...after shooting down a Messerschmitt in a dog-fight!

Really and true! LARGE!

A WW2 re-enactment weekend took place at an old disused airfield on the edge of the New Forest last weekend. It was only a mile from my father's farm. I saw him the previous day on the Saturday before going down to Poole to get my lovely sunset Blip - Huge thanks for ALL the many Favourites for that and it did get quite high in the Spotlights, where it still is, now. If you haven't seen it, it is rather a lovely one, so...

On the Sunday, my brother was holding a BBQ for some (well, lots) of his cronies, er, I mean, friends, at my father's and I was definitely not invited! I wouldn't have wanted to either - fifty of his towny 'friends', thank you very much! They were going to get a free view of the aerial displays and get drunk.

I didn't go to the actual re-enactment site as I couldn't find a proper website with the entrance cost advertised, so climbed up onto the New Forest moors above the site and enjoyed the Forest in its late summer glory.

The planes, frankly, were tiny little buzzing dots in a huge sky. My big long lens, which took this beauty, of Lancaster, Spitfire AND Hurricane flying over the Purbecks at last year's Bournemouth Air Tattoo, remains broken.

Towards the end of the afternoon, several other people had had the same idea as me and were watching from the hill. A lot of trees and greenery in the way didn't help either! Someone mentioned that the finale, the culmination of the weekend was this dog-fight between a Spitfire and ME-109.

The Spitfire went up, (on its own) twirled about, went upside down and looped the loop. Very nice. Rubbish shots.

Then the Messerschmitt. Ditto.

We couldn't hear the commentary and so after a gap, presumed that the dog-fight had been cancelled and so I left and walked down the hill, to eventually get the bus back home. The track I took went past the actual grounds and as I was passing, the unmistakable sound of the Spitfire swooped down low. It made a few passing manoeuvres for the crowd.

Then the Messerschmitt joined, but of course, for safety, they had to fly quite a distance from each other and higher up too. They didn't fire at each other, of course, but the ME109 did have a smoke canister under its belly which churned out a trail. It (obviously) flew off back to where it came from, rather than crashing spectacularly.

Whilst up on that heathland moor, it was blazing hot and the scent was heavy. The skies blue. Veterans will often tell you that the Battle of Britain, in the summer of 1940, when such dog-fights were taking place, probably in the very skies I saw them, was very much like that day.

My image here is not cropped. It really was THAT close. The sound was loud and quite frightening, if you didn't know what it was - if your life depended on the outcome back then, well, the hairs on the back of my neck certainly bristled thinking about it.

The 1.4x teleconverter was on the Tamron SP 70-300mm VC, like the previous day's sunset and I had to focus it all manually. The sun is actually behind the plane, so the upside you see was actually mostly in deep shadow,

Cue a lot of shadow extraction and brightening, a touch of added sharpness and that's about it.

Apologies if you wanted to see the rarer ME109 instead, or a different view of this Spitfire. Many shots taken, many pretty good, but being Blip, just one has to stand tall. Just like the Spitfire did, when it was so needed.

A lump in your throat? Not half!!

Messerschmitt now up on Flickr