In the summer sunshine the 12 Supermarine Spitfires of B flight roared across the sunlit sky in four sections of three, all anxious to do battle with the enemy. That morning the order to move had arrived and at long last they were about to see action. “Now, we’ll show the bastards!” shouted one of the pilots Noel “Broody” Benson before the flight took off. “Jesus, will we show ‘em.” But before the Fighter Boys (as they were known) could do battle there was one more task they had to perform - and it was not one involving aerial combat. The voice of their commander crackled through their ear-phones. “Once more boys,” said Flight Lieutenant “Rusty” Rushmer and the twelve aircraft banked into line formation before swooping down towards the dappled landscape below. Only just visible as they dived one by one over the fields was a group of schoolchildren who waved their hands in silent farewell. And on the road through the valley could be seen carefully placed white boulders spelling out a fond “Good luck”. The fighter pilots had said goodbye to the children on the ground before going to risk their lives for the future of those children.

It sounds like a quintessential scene from the long hot summer of 1940 but it did not take place in the skies above the fields of Kent, Essex and Sussex where the Battle of Britain was fought. It happened five hundred miles to the north above the tiny hamlet of Tarfside in Glen Esk, one of the Angus glens which form the eastern massif of the Cairngorms. The Spitfires had flown from nearby RAF Montrose and they belonged to 603 City of Edinburgh Squadron which had trained in the Angus coastal town and was on its way to the south of England to take part in the aerial struggle against the German Luftwaffe which came to be known as the Battle of Britain. While undertaking their training over the hills to the west of Montrose the pilots of 603 Squadron had become accustomed to flying low over Tarfside where the children, some of them evacuees, “would wave and shout and dance in ecstasy” as the Spitfires flew overhead.

One of the fighter pilots and the writer of those words was a young Oxford graduate called Richard Hillary who went on to write The Last Enemy, one of the best books about the Battle of Britain and the young men who fought it. It is also the story of how he confronted the terrible burns which afflicted his face and arms after his Spitfire was shot down over the English Channel at the height of the battle leaving him horribly disfigured. His book is also a fitting monument to 603 Squadron, one of two Scottish-based fighter squadrons which fought in the Battle of Britain, the other being 602 City of Glasgow Squadron.

Both were squadrons of the Auxiliary Air Force which had been raised in 1924 to provide the RAF with a civilian reserve of trained pilots who were required to fly a few hours every quarter and attend an annual camp. The squadrons attracted adventurous young men who were drawn to the glamour and excitement of flying but they had to have private means as they were responsible for obtaining a pilot's licence at their own expense, at a cost of £96, about £5,000 today. As a result they attracted a good deal of social exclusivity but there was no denying their courage or their ability. Both the Scottish auxiliary squadrons had been in action since 1939 and had claimed “kills”, shooting down German bombers off the east coast of Scotland in the first aerial actions of the war. During the actual battle 14 of the RAF’s 62 squadrons were auxiliaries and were responsible for destroying some 30% of the estimated 1,887 downed German aircraft. They were amongst the young men whose lives will be commemorated today at a service of thanksgiving and rededication held in Westminster Abbey in the presence of the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall marking the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain.

Seventy-five years later the Battle of Britain is still worth commemorating because in the summer of 1940 Britain was fighting for its life and the outcome depended on the skill and morale of 3,000 young men of RAF Fighter Command. Earlier in the summer the ruinous defeat of the British Army at Dunkirk could have had a damaging influence on the morale of people of Britain but the opposite seemed to happen. For the next eighteen months Britain was on her own, supported only by the forces of the Dominions and by the forces of free Europe which had managed to escape the Nazi invasions. It was a parlous period but there was renewed hope when RAF Spitfire and Hurricane fighters overcame their German opponents in the skies above southern England and gained sufficient superiority to persuade Hitler to abandon plans for a cross-Channel invasion.

By any standards the Battle of Britain was a glorious and hard-fought victory and the author George Orwell was right to compare it to Trafalgar. It has also created its own mythology. Quite apart from the fillip to the national psyche it gave substance to the defiant decision to fight on against Nazi Germany and to refuse all overtures to make any bargain with Hitler. History generally records it as an English victory which was won in the skies over the southern counties - often in full view of those living below - but amongst the air crew were squadrons and aircrew representing the Dominions, Poland, Czechoslovakia, the United States and, of course, Scotland which was represented by its two auxiliary air force squadrons.

In the middle of August that year 602 City of Glasgow Squadron left its base in Drem East Lothian for Tangmere in Kent and was first in action against enemy aircraft on August 16. A fortnight later 603 Squadron was also on its way south to Hornchurch in Essex. It too was soon in action, losing three Spitfires and two pilots, a fact recorded by Richard Hillary who watched the squadron returning with “smoke stains along the leading edges of the wings showing that all the guns had been fired.”

Hillary’s squadron fought for the rest of the Battle of Britain and returned to Scotland in December, as did 602 Squadron. Both of the Scottish auxiliary squadrons saw out the rest of the war and were disbanded in the summer of 1945 having seen active front-line service in the UK, Europe and Malta. Their record speaks for itself: both were first to see action against the Luftwaffe and first to shoot down German bombers over the UK mainland. In New Zealand-born Flying Officer Brian Carbery 603 Squadron had one of the RAF’s five top-scoring aces in the Battle of Britain and the squadron itself had the honour of being the highest scoring squadron with 58 kills in return for the loss of 30 aircraft while 602 Squadron’s record was 35.5 kills for the loss of 17 aircraft.

None of the Scottish losses was more poignant than that of Noel Benson who had been so cock-a-hoop about the prospect of leaving Montrose and going into action – his nickname “Broody” was given to him because he could not hide his unhappiness when not flying. No sooner had 603 Squadron arrived at Hornchurch in Essex than its Spitfires were in action the following day, August 28. Benson had his wish and was in the thick of the fighting but he was quickly bounced by seven Messerschmitt 109 fighters.

On the ground at Leigh Green near Tenterden in Kent people watched in horror as Benson’s Spitfire poured out smoke and dived out of the sky. At the last minute, about 1,000 feet above the ground Benson managed to level out but failed to use his parachute and continued flying until the Spitfire crashed in a charred mass of metal. Those on the ground were convinced that the young pilot had deliberately stayed with his machine to prevent it hitting farm buildings, the village and a large Army Service Corps depot. He was the first of 18 pilots from the two Scottish squadrons to be killed in the Battle of Britain and whose names with all the others will be commemorated today.