Painting honouring Bomber Command's fallen is unveiled at aviation museum
A special painting, dedicated to the thousands of young men of RAF Bomber Command who fought the Nazis in World War Two, has been unveiled in Lincolnshire.
The official unveiling took place at the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre in East Kirkby, near Spilsby, the popular museum that is the home of the Lancaster Bomber NX611.
The painting, which was previously located at the RAF (Royal Air Force) Club in London, now takes pride of place in the new NAAFI (Navy, Army and Air Force Institute) at the centre after the period-building’s extensive 15-month refurbishment and extension.
It is called ‘55,573’ after the number of Bomber Command men who gave their lives during the war effort and depicts a spectacular image of a bomber crew.
Backlit, it is painted in white oil over a white canvas, while the frame comes in a non-reflective black paint, which is exactly the same as that on the underside of Bomber Command’s aircraft during the war and as that used on the museum’s NX611 when it was re-painted in 2017.
Poppies at the bottom of the frame are some of the thousands dropped by the Battle Of Britain Memorial Flight’s own Lancaster bomber, the PA474 the City Of Lincoln, and released over the Bomber Command Memorial at Hyde Park Corner in London when it was inaugurated by the late Queen Elizabeth II in June, 2012.
The painting was created by the Derbyshire-based artist Andy Finlay and came about because he was so moved when he first saw the Bomber Command Memorial.
Andy was at the unveiling, as was Chris Lowe, a private art collector who commissioned the painting and gifted it to the centre.
In a speech he made at the ceremony, Chris said: “Andy completed his painting in early 2018, the RAF’s centenary, and it hung that year at the RAF Club on Piccadilly. Since then, it has needed a permanent home.
“Now it has found that home, here in the NAAFI of the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre, on this former airfield, which is a museum dedicated to the courage and bravery of the young men of Bomber Command, especially those who gave their lives for our freedom.
"It will sit alongside the many other exhibits, including the Lancaster and Mosquito aircraft.
"Like every other exhibit here, large and small, this painting’s purpose is to give people pause for thought about those young men who, in spite of the odds and in spite of their fears, risked and gave their lives in order that we, people they would never know, could live free.
“I am grateful to the museum for allowing this painting to hang here. Thankyou Andy for creating such a moving piece of art and to Phillip Panton and his colleagues at this centre for giving it a permanent home.”
Phillip, owner of the centre, is the nephew of Pilot Officer Christopher Whitton Panton, one of the Bomber Command men who lost their lives during the war. He was killed during the night of March 30, 1944 on a disastrous air-raid over Nuremberg in Germany, which resulted in 545 deaths.
Christopher was the elder brother of Fred Panton (Phillip’s father) and Harold Panton, who originally set up the aviation centre in 1988.