EACH August, when the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight passes over Bournemouth’s East Cliff, one resident knows a Spitfire before he sees it.

Stanley Hartill was servicing the fighters as the country fought for its survival 75 years ago.

The Battle of Britain was Hitler’s attempt to achieve air superiority that summer and autumn, ready for an invasion along the south coast of England.

Winston Churchill coined the name Battle of Britain before the conflict had even begun, warning: “Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war.”

Mr Hartill, now 94, joined the RAF in February 1940, and stationed an airframe fitter with RAF 609 Spitfire Squadron at Middle Wallop, Hampshire.

“I got on this bus with all my kit and when we approached the Middle Wallop RAF station, I looked out and I couldn’t believe my eyes. All the hangars had had their roofs blown off because they had been subject to a German air raid,” he said.

“Hitler had decided if he could put all the RAF fighter aerodromes out of order, then he’d be able to carry out the invasion of Britain, which was Sea Lion, unopposed, so he bombed every RAF station in force.”

The squadron was unscathed, because it was dispersed at the far end of the airfield.

“The first week or so I was there, the defence of Southampton and Portsmouth was our job. But then suddenly when the Battle of Britain started it was all hands on deck. Lads had to fly to defend London, of course.

“We were put on red alert. We used to work from 7am and we were out on dispersal until dusk. We had to be there and the pilots as well.

“The pilots’ wives took over the local church hall at Middle Wallop and they used to serve us with egg and chips to us ground crew up until 11pm.”

Mr Hartill still vividly remembers the routines for getting the Spitfire airborne. The ground crewman connecting the battery lead to start the plane would be just 2ft from the propeller when it started.

“We used to put a couple of chucks underneath to stop the Spitfire moving and we’d pull them out the way, wave to the pilot and off he went.

“Then we had a little time to ourselves. We would wait for the Spitfires to come back and then, after about an hour, they would start to return and we knew straight away if they’d been in action.

“We had a specific spot to park every Spitifre and we jumped onto the wing, pulled the canopy back and the first words were ‘Have you had any luck, sir?’

“They’d say ‘Yes, I downed one’ or ‘I think I’ve downed one so I’m only going to claim a half’ and things like that or ‘No, I’ve had no luck at all today’.”

The ground crew would then help the pilot out so the Spitfire could be refuelled. “They held 84 gallons and the petrol tank was right in front of the pilot,” said Mr Hartill.

“It was a bit frightening because you were there putting this petrol in and 18 inches away was red hot exhaust from the engine which hadn’t cooled down, so you’d think ‘I’d better not spill any of this petrol on this red hot engine’.

“Then we had to go all round the Spitifre, we had to check up to see no bullet holes. If there was a bullet hole in it we couldn’t repair the bullet holes on site, we didn’t have the equipment, so the Spits were flown to Southampton, to the Spitfire factory and they would be back with us in days.

“Once that was all done we were simply stood down and we just talked amongst ourselves, read a book, listened to an old-fashioned gramophone, the Andrews Sisters, things like that, and we’d wait about. The NAAFI van used to come twice, right down to our dispersal vans. We’d hang about until suddenly there was a bell and when the bell rang, that meant action and everybody knew what to do.”

Mr Hartill used to look after the flight commander’s spit and remembers the pilot telling him that September: “They’re pattern bombing London and there is absolutely nothing we could do to stop them.”

Mr Hartill said: “Then we knew there was something very big going on and a few days afterwards we were on supreme standby, which was when the Germans were going to launch Sea Lion, the invasion of Britain.

“We heard all kinds of stories. We heard there were landing barges being massed in Holland. We heard that they tried to put to sea and our navy set fire to the sea with oil and burned them.

“We weren’t allowed to leave the Spits. We had to sleep under the wing all night, ready.

“Spits don’t fly at night but the air crew put out a double path of paraffin flares right down Middle Wallop air field. The understanding was that if it was an invasion, someone had to light those flares so the Spits could take off in the dark to defend us against invasion.

“Thank God Hitler changed his mind and the invasion, Sea Lion, never took place and our Spits never had to fly at night.”

Mr Hartill went on to be part of the elite RAF Servicing Commando, maintaining Spitfires in France in the days following the D-Day landings.

He recalls his reflections in June 1944. “When the Spitfires landed, the first 36, my very first thoughts were ‘This is payback time’, because during the Battle of Britain we were so under the cosh.

“It was a wonderful thought that at last, we were the governors.”