Carolyn’s spirit flies high in her Spitfire (From Basingstoke Gazette)

Carolyn’s spirit flies high in her Spitfire

10:29am Wednesday 16th March 2011 in Memories By Richard Garfield

AN AEROPLANE which symbolises the British bulldog spirit of the Second World War – a 1944 Spitfire – dipped its wings over Hampshire earlier this month. And in the cockpit was a one-time Basingstoke resident.

Thousands of people in and around Southampton were thrilled to see the iconic aircraft fly in the skies above the city on the 75th anniversary of the Spitfire’s maiden flight.

Carolyn Grace was the woman at the controls of her “Grace Spitfire” which flew on the commemorative flight and on a second flight over Southampton Airport.

The former Basingstoke resident said: “To be in Southampton for the 75th anniversary of the first flight, to be standing on the ground at the very spot RJ Mitchell was standing looking at his design all those years ago, it makes my knees go weak – it is the greatest honour I could have.”

Carolyn praised the beauty of the Spitfire, its sound and the way it flies.

She said: “You don’t get into a Spitfire, you put it on – it’s like a good suit.

“You’re not an appendage in a piece of machinery, you are a part of it.

“And it’s so responsive – unlike other aircraft of its time. It’s instantly responsive and so it’s the nearest thing you get to being a bird.”

Carolyn enjoys the feeling of freedom while flying her Spitfire, which is based at the Imperial Air Museum in Duxford, Cambridgeshire and maintained at Bentwaters, Suffolk.

“When I’m flying down to Southampton, Basingstoke is such a wonderful land feature,” said Carolyn.

“It’s one of the best land features because all of my flying is done VFR – visual flight rules – so I have to be in sight of the land at all times and below cloud and it’s so wonderful to see Basingstoke – it has such a distinct shape with the roads around it – more so than any other place.”

The Grace Spitfire, which was built in Castle Bromwich, in the West Midlands, has a distinguished history.

“It was a single-seat fighter during the war and took part in 319 combat hours, which is remarkable,” said Carolyn.

A war hero, who earned the DSO, Flying Officer Johnnie Houlton had the good fortune to fly the Spitfire, which became his personal “mount.”

Visit YouTube to see New Zealand’s TV3 reports about Johnnie Houlton’s visit to the UK for the 1994 D-Day celebrations where, with Carolyn, he was reunited with his aircraft and took to the air again.

“He was flying her on D-Day and shot down the first enemy aircraft,” said Carolyn.

“She has a remarkable history – she went on to a number of different Squadrons, the Free French, Polish and Belgium.

“What saved her from being scrapped was that she didn’t suffer from any major structural damage during the war, which was a marvel.”

After the hostilities had come to an end, the plane was converted into a two-seat configuration.

“They moved the front cockpit forward 12 inches to put the rear cockpit in,” explained Carolyn. “This is one of the very few original Spitfires still flying.”

Carolyn’s husband Nick Grace was eventually to buy the Spitfire from a museum in Scotland in 1979 and took it down to Cornwall, where he spent five years rebuilding it.

Carolyn recalled: “The fuselage and wings were together and the tailplane, but he took it all apart, back to the bare metal and then put it all back together again with modern anti corrosives and rivets. In 1985, Nick flew it for the first time and I went with him.”

Sadly, Nick died in a car accident in 1988 – but Carolyn was determined to make sure his Spitfire survived.

“I knew to keep his spirit alive, and to keep his achievement within the family, I had to learn to fly her,” said Carolyn. “And it was also to keep the Spitfire operational and all that it represents to the nation and the world – because this is a world-famous Spitfire.”