Ted, now 84, from Ecclesfield, was a mid-upper gunner on Lancasters.

Not that he remembers it with affection. "It was bloody awful! You were flying out on a knife edge and never knew what was going to happen," he recalls.

Tickets to the flypast at Derwent on May 16 are strictly limited to 400 cars and then only by email.

Ted's not on the net so appealed to the Diary for help. This page had a word with the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight and a ticket is winging its way to him.

His place on the Lancaster was in the little bubble turret at the top of the plane.

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"The turrets were the coldest places in an aircraft, especially on a cold winter's night when the temperature got down to minus 20C at something over 20,000 feet," he says.

Ted flew with C Wing of 100 Squadron, which then went on to become 625 Squadron, and flew many bombing missions over Germany towards the end of World War Two.

He never shot anything down. For Ted, his guns were for defence not attack.

"I once saw an ME 109 (German fighter] a quarter of a mile away but I wouldn't attack it. Protection is better than cure," he says.

"As I told my students when I lectured as an air gunner later, you do not encourage trouble!"

But that didn't always get you out of it. One mission ended up with his plane's fins and rudders being severely mangled. They still managed to drop their bombs then ditched everything, including a seven man survival dinghy, to lose weight before an emergency landing at Woodbridge, Suffolk.

n STAMPER Metcalfe, another Lancaster flyer from 100 Squadron, was also fascinated by the article.

He was bomb aimer and radar operator from 1944-45 and flew in the famous Lanc-aster nicknamed Hellzapoppin.

Stamper took part in the firebombing of Dresden and in 2004, on the 60th anniversary, was invited over to the city to meet survivors. Not surprisingly, he was a little nervous of his reception.

"There were 16 tables, each with 10 people. A woman came up and said thank you for saving my life.

She was a Jewish girl arrested in Holland by the Gestapo and due to be executed the day following the raid. The jail was bombed and she escaped."

Applications for tickets to dambustersmemorial@ peakdistrict.gov.uk

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