The Phantom of the Ruhr, EE139

BBMF Lancaster PA474, RAF Coningsby, April 2007

The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight celebrated 50 years in 2007, and underwent a complete refit to fly again in the livery of 550 Squadron Lancaster EE139 the "Phantom of the Ruhr", a ton-up Lancaster that flew her first 30 ops on No. 100 Squadron based at Waltham before completing a further 91 ops on No. 550 Squadron at North Killingholme. She sports the letters HW-R of 100 Squadron on her port side and BQ-B of 550 Squadron on her starboard, effectively commemorating the crews of both Squadrons. See this BBC link for details about the refit: http://www.bbc.co.uk/lincolnshire/content/articles/2007/04/10/lancaster_refit_feature.shtml.

Below is a ca. 30sec video clip of one of the fly-pasts at RAF Coningsby, April 2007 when The Phantom of the Ruhr was unveiled. BBMF Lancaster PA474 as she makes a close fly-by of the air-traffic control tower (you may need to hover the mouse over area to bring up the play/pause/volume controls on some web-browsers).

Please note that you may require a flash plugin, and depending on your internet connection streaming may be slow.

A further selection of video streamed clips of various events from the day are available from the following video list link. A full selection of pictures, videos and other information from the unveiling of The Phantom of the Ruhr are available using the link below:

More details about the day can be found on the following MoD site: Battle of Britain Memorial Flight celebrates 50 years.