Doug’s memories fuelled by visit

Doug and Marjorie Ashmore visit the historic Lancaster aircraft, City of Lincoln, part of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight

Lancaster tour is highlight of holiday

A HOLIDAY trip to Lincolnshire reunited a Royton man with a historic aircraft he played a vital link in keeping in the air.

Doug Ashmore and his wife, Marjorie, visited the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight at RAF Coningsby to see the UK’s only airworthy Lancaster bomber, named City of Lincoln.

And Doug reflected on how he helped to make replacement giant fuel tanks, each holding 580 gallons, in the 1990s to keep the iconic aircraft flying.

Doug’s engineering apprenticeship began in 1949 at Avro’s — later BAE Systems — on Greengate, Chadderton, where thousands of local people worked on the Lancasters during the Second World War.

Later he went to work at Middleton Sheet Metal, where the fuel tanks from the Battle of Britain flight Lancaster were sent to be checked for safety.

Now retired. Doug (76), a committee member of Royton Historical Society, recalled: “When we stripped the rubber protection off the fuel tanks, we found a crayoned message underneath, ‘This one’s OK May’.

“Many people commented on the fine work which had been done on the welding on the tanks, most probably by women. Women were really, really good at welding during the war.

“There was also a plaque with the name Marlborough Mill, Failsworth, on it. Marlborough Mill was also used for aircraft production during the war.

“We stripped the rubber coating off the tanks, which was used as protection to absorb and close behind a certain size of shell if it was hit.

“We did a report on the tanks, which were still good, but the commanding officer decided to have new ones, so we made them without detailed drawings, just by measurements and using our eyes.”

Doug’s father Frank, from Manchester, also made the special bomb-bay doors for the Lancasters used in the bouncing bomb raids on dams in the Ruhr Valley in Germany, immortalised in the film, “The Dam Busters”.

And when Doug became an apprentice at Avro’s the factory was still making spares for the Lancasters, and he also worked on the RAF’s long-range Shackleton and Vulcan aircraft.

Doug added: “Our tour at Coningsby should have been 11/2 hours but we got 21/2 hours, possibly because of my connection to the aircraft.

“I have a soft spot for the Lancaster — it was absolutely emblematic of the time and the era.”