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This is a wartime story of my late Father, Anthony John Prescott born in 1920 at Sandgate in Kent he was called up in 1939 at the start of WWII, he served in No. 32 Squadron which was based at Biggin Hill. This was a Hurricane Fighter Squadron. While at Biggin Hill they would check the aeroplane and have it ready for the pilot, this included fuelling up and re-arming the aircraft. He talked a lot about scrambling the aircraft and dispersals!

During the War he was despatched to North Africa and Italy where they rescued crashed aircraft and brought parts of the aircraft back to the UK, amongst these were an ME109 Power Plant and a Mercedez Benz Aero Engine.

Whilst at Biggin Hill there was one occasion when he was taxiing a hurricane down the runway and hit a petrol bowser and later received a court martial.

There were a number of pilots he talked about, these were Mike Crossley known as the Red Knight, Pete Brothers, Douglas Grice (Grubby being his nickname) and Keith Gilman who was shot down on 25th August 1940 over the channel he was 32 Squadron’s first pilot to be lost and is famous for being on the front cover of the book called Battle of Britain ‘Then and Now’.

The aircraft he looked after at Biggin Hill was called GZ-C N2459 which was flown by Pilot Officer D. H. Grice and was shot down in flames on 15th August south of Harwich, the pilot was rescued (there is a photograph of this plane in the book called The Battle of Britain Then and Now.

After being in combat, the first port of call would be the White Hart at Brasted which became famous for the blackout screen that the pilots all put their name to, this is now in the RAF museum at Hendon. We had the privilege of seeing it in the White Hart when we took my father there after visiting Biggin Hill Aerodrome, on his birthday in 1990, fifty years after the battle.

After the War ended, he decided to come out of the RAF, he moved to Warwick in the Midlands, where he joined the company of Donald Healey working as a mechanic and tester of the Healey Cars, he talked about driving down to Newport Pagnell to test the cars and often without any brakes! His knowledge of Engines stayed with him all his life and when on visits to AirShows and Museums he would attract an audience as he stood and gave a talk all about them.

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