Imperial War Museum Duxford held their sixth ‘Flying Evening’ on Saturday 22nd August. While it is not the biggest event within Duxford’s flying season, it has become a firm favourite with many spectators presenting an array of vintage aircraft in the soft, golden light on sunset. This year, it was a smaller line-up than previous years, but was brimming with quality with historic aircraft from the UK and Poland.
Paul Johnson/Flightline UK reports. All photography by the author.
It is uncanny that Duxford seem to get fine weather for the Flying Evening. All six editions of the event have enjoyed fine weather for the period of the event, even if the hours before have endured showers and grey skies. The 2026 Flying Evening came at the end of a period of exceptionally warm and dry weather which has left Duxford looking more like an airfield in southern Europe. That did mean that pyrotechnics usually reserved for the event finale were dropped due to the risk not only to the airfield, but the surrounding arable fields and countryside in which the vegetation was tinder dry.
As well as the flying, the evening offers the chance for visitors to tour the hangars after hours. Some of the exhibition spaces, including the American Air Museum were illuminated with coloured lights as darkness descended on Duxford. Outside, there was a static display of some lighter vintage aircraft including Paul Ford’s fleet plus the Vintage Gramophone DJ adding to the ambience. What slightly dented that ambience was the repeated ‘Testing..1..2..3’ messages that came over the public address system during the first part of the flying displays as organizers tried to resolve a fault with the system.
The Flying Evening takes place after the main museum has closed for the day and is ticketed separately. However, those that wish to can visit the museum during the day if they pay the normal admission as well or for free if they are IWM Members. On this occasion, it was a reasonably busy day at Duxford with Aerial Collective flying some formation experience flights with their Supermarine Spitfire IXT PV202, Hawker Hurricane IIb BE505 and North American P-51D Mustang ‘Tall in the Saddle.’ Classic Wings were also active, notably with their Wingwalking partnership with the Ethel Dares team and their Boeing-Stearman A75 Kaydet. Also performing a fly-through just ahead of the Flying Evening was Fighter Aviation Engineering Ltd’s P-51D Mustang ‘Jersey Jerk.’
The line-up for the Flying Evening was smaller than usual and the display lasted for just over one hour forty minutes. Small it may have been, but it was full of quality and included some excellent themed formations. Opening the display just before 7pm was the Lilham Aviation Supermarine Spitfire IX MK912 flown with some gusto by James Hepnar. This aircraft is no stranger to Duxford, but this was its first appearance under the ownership of Sywell based Lilham Aviation. It wears its authentic 312 Czech Squadron colours it wore at the time of the D-Day Landings. It is known as the ‘Normandy Spitfire’ as it is reputed to have been the first allied fighter to land there after the D-Day landings following a radio failure.
Following the Spitfire was a Flying Evening favourite, Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress ‘Sally-B’ captained by Peter Kuypers with Paul Szluha in the co-pilots seat. While it may be a regular participant at Duxford events, there is something particularly evocative about seeing the B-17 fly in the early evening light, particularly as it trails smoke representing a damaged aircraft returning from a daylight raid over occupied Europe.
An aerobatic interlude from the warbird flying came from Mark Linney and his beautifully presented Vans RV-8. Mark is no stranger to Duxford having flown many historic aircraft from the Cambridgeshire airfield including Golden Apple’s F-86A Sabre. In the RV-8, he flew an exceptionally elegant sequence of aerobatics with the low sun glinting over the RV-8’s silver colour scheme.
The first big formation of the evening covered aircraft from the early part of the Second World War, all operated by the Aircraft Restoration Company. Leading the trio was the Bristol Blenheim 1F flanked by the Westland Lysander IIIa and the IWM’s Supermarine Spitfire Ia. After a couple of passes together, the three aircraft broke away from each other for solo displays starting with the Blenheim which was put through a series of sweeping passes and wingovers by John Romain. Martin Overall then followed showing off the unusual lines of the Lysander before Mike Collett completed the sequence with a lyrical aerobatic display in the whistling Spitfire.
The second formation of the evening and the final warbird action looked at a much later conflict, the Vietnam War. This featured two visiting historic aircraft from Poland in the form of FUBAR Aviation’s WSK-Mielec Lim-5 (Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17F) Fresco-C and Marcin Kubrak’s Douglas A-26C Invader ‘Miss Elouise II’. The Lim-5 had been based at Duxford since late June while undertaking a summer tour of airshows in the UK, the Channel Islands and France. That tour was entering its final stages at the time of the Flying Evening and this was the aircraft’s final Duxford airshow appearance. In contrast, the Invader was just starting its second short tour of UK shows having visited the UK last year. It was flown to Duxford from its Polish base via Dresden during afternoon of the Flying Evening. Both aircraft performed a single topside formation pass before splitting into solo displays. By now the light had dropped to the dark oranges, blues and purples of early twilight and Mateusz Strama put in a superb series of flypasts in the Lim-5 with the reheat flame flickering brightly. It was then left to John Dodd at the controls of the A-26 to being the sequence to a close with a glorious series of passes along the Duxford crowd line with the final embers of sunlight reflecting from the Invaders silver scheme which it wore in service during the Korean War.
The evening was brought to its conclusion with the Airborne Pyrotechnics team flying a pair of Grob 109b motor-gliders. Given the exceptionally dry conditions, it was not surprise that the team did not use their trademark wingtip mounted fireworks. It was also not the team’s usual line-up. Over the past few months, team owner Tim Dews has expanded his display fleet to four aircraft and while he and Ian Gallacher were displaying Poland, his sons Tom and Ben Dews took centre stage at Duxford flying the team’s two newest aircraft through a beautiful sequence of gentle aerobatics highlighted by display smoke and LED lighting fitted to each aircraft’s fuselage and the underside of the wings.
This was a noticeably smaller edition of the Duxford Flying Evening which did lack some of the lighter, more delicate vintage aircraft that have featured at previous evenings. However, you could not fault the quality of the flying display with some really outstanding displays set against the most beautiful conditions you could hope to experience at Duxford.
