{"id":18207,"date":"2015-09-15T21:31:03","date_gmt":"2015-09-15T20:31:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=18207"},"modified":"2015-09-15T21:31:03","modified_gmt":"2015-09-15T20:31:03","slug":"the-75th-anniversary-of-the-battle-of-britain-and-our-familys-part-in-the-original-conflict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=18207","title":{"rendered":"The 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain and our family&#8217;s part in the original conflict"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today we celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain in 1940 and commemorated the bravery of the almost 3,000 Royal Air Force pilots who flew in the conflict. Around 40 World War Two aircraft &#8211; Spitfires, Hurricanes and Blenheims &#8211; were brought together to fly over southern England, creating <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-34250794\">some amazing sights and sounds<\/a>. This was the largest such grouping since the war itself. One of those in the air was a 95 year old veteran of the Battle itself.<\/p>\n<p>In the Battle of Britain, a fifth of the RAF&#8217;s pilots were not in fact British. Almost 90 of them were Czechoslovaks including the father of my wife Vee: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk.html\">Karel Kuttelwascher<\/a> who flew Hurricanes and, later in the war, won the Distinguished Flying Cross twice in 42 days. Vee tried to see some of the aircraft at Northolt, but in the end they landed elsewhere. However, Vee&#8217;s twin sister Mari was able to see all the aircraft take off from Goodwood.<\/p>\n<p>Many years ago, I used the family&#8217;s records and many other sources to write a biography of Karel Kuttelwascher or Kut as his comrades called him. In 1985, after three years of research, the book, entitled &#8220;Night Hawk&#8221;, was published. I thought that would be the end of the story &#8211; but time and time we have been invited to revisit Kut&#8217;s amazing record.<\/p>\n<p>So, currently I am in discussions with a company which &#8211; 30 years later &#8211; wants to republish the book with some additions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today we celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain in 1940 and commemorated the bravery of the almost 3,000 Royal Air Force pilots who flew in the conflict. Around 40 World War Two aircraft &#8211; Spitfires, Hurricanes and Blenheims &#8211; were brought together to fly over southern England, creating some amazing sights and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18207"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18213,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18207\/revisions\/18213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}