Sign up to a Dambusters experience and practice your low level flying over the moors and reservoirs of Yorkshire! These Dambusters flights take off from Durham Tees Valley Airport and offer you over an hour of flying time to give you an insight into the sort of flight training the Dambusters pilots undertook.
Although you’ll be in a modern two or four seater light aircraft rather than a Lancaster Bomber for these Dambusters flying lessons the views when low level flying are certainly impressive. Having said that those heroic pilots had to practice flying down to 150ft (well below radar detection level) without modern navigational aids. Tricky to say the least. When Doctor Barnes Wallis asked Wing Commander Gibson in the 1955 Dambusters film how they were getting on with the low level flying he replied: ‘Ah it’s awfully hard to get accuracy. I mean to within a few feet. Especially at night over water. Still we’ll find some way of doing it’.
Flying in low to drop the famous ‘bouncing bombs’ over the Ruhr Basin within a few feet of each other was key to the operation’s success. Skimming the tree tops is pretty scary stuff and as the RAF guys say if you can see the feet of the sheep you’re too low. On these Dambusters flight experiences you won’t be going that low (phew!) but you will certainly still be able to see the sheep’s legs!
You will take off for your Dambuster flight and achieve normal cruising level of around 3000-4000ft. There’s lots of wild countryside to explore around these parts including the North Yorks Moors and the North Pennines with the likes of Balderhead Selset and Grassholme reservoirs. These places are also the perfect backdrop for a rapid descent down to 500ft (the legal minimum level flying these days).
And yes at those sort of flight altitudes you can see everything from the cockpit. Dog walkers on the Moors farmers herding their cattle and of course those ubiquitous sheeps’ legs too. But thankfully being in fairly quiet Piper aircraft means ‘the chickens won’t be laying premature eggs’ like they did when the Lancasters roared overhead! It’s a fantastic way to recreate just a small part of the Dambusters’ training on a flying lesson in a superb corner of the world though.
We are offering the Dambusters flight experience in both a two seater and four seater modern light aircraft. With many ex-RAF pilots on the roster at this Durham Tees Valley school the chances are you’ll be able to quiz them about their low level flying exploits in fast jets whilst you fly!
