ANYONE who has been to Biggin Hill Air Fair will have seen Ray Hanna flying. With little doubt he was Britain's leading Display pilot. Sadly he died on 2nd December aged 77.
I remember seeing Ray leading the Red Arrows at Biggin Hill when I was a boy in the late sixties. A couple of years later he did a low flypast in a Cathay Pacific 707. I last saw him this year, when he concluded the Biggin Hill Air Fair in Spitfire MH434 aged 76. I couldn't put my finger on why it was so different; all I know is that watching that Spitfire, on an English summers' evening as they played the Last Post over the PA system, was a most sublime experience. At least one person wrote to this paper saying the same thing so I know it wasn't just me.
Ray, and Mark (his son who was killed flying in 1999), epitomised the beauty and the freedom and the sacrifice of flight. (Per Ardua ad Astra) ADRIAN ROBERTS
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