Maurice Hammond at his desk at Eye Tech Engineering

Flying ace who gave wings to his dream

First published in Let's Talk! Suffolk, February 2006

Like so many boys, Maurice Hammond enjoyed assembling model war planes. Unlike most, he grew up to build the real things - and fly them too.

There's a crackle on the loudspeaker, a crackle of excitement in the air. Eyes turn skyward. There's a distant drone of an engine, coming closer. Then suddenly it's a roar and everyone is held spellbound as a genuine World War II fighter plane performs aerobatics over their heads.

A little over 60 years ago, airfields all across East Anglia were hives of activity as British and American airmen waged an all-out war to the death against Nazi Germany.

The air war remains etched deeply into the soul of the region - it is part of who and what we are. Keeping the memory alive is the passion of a small number of dedicated men and women.

Men like Maurice Hammond, air ace extraordinary, though he was born 13 years after the war ended and has never been in the forces.

If your head has been one of those lifted at an air fete to marvel at the display of a veteran fighter plane, it's a fair chance the pilot showing off his skills was Maurice. And not just his flying skills, either, but his skill at rebuilding the old plane and putting it back in the air.

At a cluttered desk in his office at his small, unmarked engineering works in Eye, Maurice tells his story. He tells it in a soft-spoken, matter-of-fact way as if it is the most natural thing in the world for a secondary-modern schoolboy to grow up to build and fly planes. Which it probably is if the boy happens to have such quiet determination, such a resolute twinkle in the eye.

And as it turns out, the story of how he came to run his own precision engineering firm and the story of his love affair with aircraft are twined together.

"I flew model aeroplanes when I left school. I was one of the founder members of the Diss and District Model Flying Club. That was in the mid-1970s.

"I first worked in Diss at Alma Components in the workshops there. I was made redundant after a year and went to work for a small engineering company at Hoxne, where I trained as a toolmaker.

A man and his future - Maurice Hammond with part of one of his refurbished Rolls Royce Merlin engines

"The company at Hoxne split up and moved to Diss, and I spent two or three years there. Then I broke away from there and started my own company at Eye.

"In 1985, November 4, I started up on my own. The next year I employed one guy, then a lass, then bought a few more machines.

"I learned to fly at Ipswich Airport in 1988-89 in a Piper Tomahawk. I looked at the engineering skills round aeroplanes. They seem to have an aura round them like 'You can't tighten that screw there, you've got to have a licence.'

"I thought, 'Well, I can do that', so I built a Stein Skybolt, a two-seater aerobatic bi-plane, from plans and drawings.

"I then thought it would be nice to have a four-seater aeroplane to take the family around, so I bought two Cessna 172s from a breaker's yard, both of which were damaged in the hurricane of 1987, and made the two aeroplanes into one, with all the necessary Civil Aviation Authority approval. That flew in 1992."

That was also the year Maurice bought the first of his small fleet of World War II planes.

The Texas-built Harvard saw service in Britain from 1944 to 1956, when it was sold to the Portuguese air force. When Maurice bought it from a Portuguese museum it had been standing idle since 1973. With his own skill and dedication, he completely restored it, painting it in the colours of the 100 th Bomb Group, which flew out of Thorpe Abbotts, Norfolk , in the war. He has been flying it since 1994.

The Harvard was, and still is, an advanced training plane. "If you can handle a Harvard, you can fly any of the big fighters," explains Maurice.

"I then built from plans a Laser, which is a single-seater, just built for aerobatics, in 1996.

"I started work on a Hurricane, then bought the Mustang in Easter 97. I worked on that through till the first flight, which was on Friday the 13th of July, 2001."

The Mustang, a veteran of the New Zealand air force, is now the star of Maurice's fleet, based at Hardwick airfield, near Long Stratton. She was given the name Janie by Major Bill Price, former ace of the 353rd Fighter Group at Raydon in Essex, when he returned there last September, for the first time since the war, at the age of 85.

Maurice chose the colours of Bill's 350th squadron "because I like black-and-yellow chequers" - and because "I didn't want a Mustang that was all silver, and Bill's one had what we called drab uppers: all the horizontal surfaces that look skyward were all olive drab".

American Mustangs played a crucial role in the Allies' war victory. British-built Spitfires and Hurricanes are rightly remembered for their part in the Battle of Britain, but the Mustangs' greater range enabled them to take the war to the Germans, accompanying the bombers as protection on their raids deep in enemy territory.

Flying machine - the Harvard, here in air show action, was the first warbird rebuilt by Maurice Hammond

Maurice enthuses, "The Mustang was the best fighter of the Second World War, without a doubt. It won't turn as tight as the Spitfire, but it has the range, and the speed. To fly aerobatics with it is just delightful.

"The Mustang, you can pull out of the hangar, hit a button and you fly. With the Spitfire it tends to be when you pull it out of the hangar, you've got to fix it; you go to fly it, you get back, you've got to fix it again. Pull it out a week later, and you have to do the same thing all over again before you fly it. It's very finicky.

"There are about 160 Mustangs around, including seven or eight in the UK , of which probably five or six are flying. There are probably 20 or 30 Spitfires here, and about 60 or 70 worldwide. There are more Harvards than anything else.

"I'm not in love with Spitfires and Hurricanes, although we manufacture parts all day long for them."

Those parts, some for Duxford and other companies like Hawker Restorations, who rebuild Hurricanes near Ipswich, are only a fraction of the work done by the nine craftsmen at Maurice's Eye Tech Engineering. The mainstay since 1987 has been small components for fruit-labelling machines, though Maurice hopes the future may lie in rebuilding Rolls-Royce Merlin aircraft engines.

He says, "The aviation bug has increased the business a little bit. It's all historic aviation, Hurricanes, Spitfires, Mustangs, that type of thing - old aeroplanes. There's not many people who can use the old techniques and things, read the old 1930s drawings to match up the parts."

Despite the crossover of skills and interest, Maurice keeps his own planes strictly as a hobby - "just me and two or three volunteer helpers, weekends and evenings".

One of those helpers is his younger daughter Leah, who can now also be seen flying at air shows. "She flew solo in the Cessna when she was 16," says Maurice, with obvious pride.

So that's the "what" - but what about the "why"?

Maurice was the first member of his family ever to get behind the controls of a plane, yet he insists, "Aviation's just in my blood, particularly Second World War aviation.

"My father was in the Army, my grandfather was a sniper in the First World War. I've just always liked aeroplanes. Every time you hear an aeroplane go over, you always look up and think, 'Who's up there?'

"I was born and bred in Great Moulton , near Long Stratton. My grandfather worked at the Watney's maltings, as did my father, at Tivetshall. Father had several jobs and finished up working for the water board. He helped construct Tibenham airfield during the war. He drove an aggregate lorry when he was 16, before he went into the forces.

"Tibenham (where Hollywood star James Stewart was for a time squadron commander) was the next village. There's always been aviation activity in this area, Eighth Air Force airfields. It's pure local history.

"Every time I go up, it's sheer pleasure really - especially in the Mustang. In my total flying career, there have only been two incidents that would make your eyes come out on stalks - nothing I've done, but occasionally when another aircraft has been in close proximity.

"You just have to hang on there and think, every millisecond. There have been pilots who freeze at the controls. Well, you can't let that happen - you just have to be there and act.

"It's not as easy as it looks. The Harvard, Mustang, Spitfire, Hurricane - any of those big fighters - you can't see past the nose when you're landing, so you've got to rely on a big curved approach to see the big picture. Even when you roll out in line on the runway, you lose sight of the runway.

"A Mustang comes over the hedge at 110 miles an hour - it stalls at about 90. It's four and a half tons, you can't see where you're going, you've got to keep her on the runway - and stop. You do get used to it. I've done over 300 hours in her, which is a lot for a warbird.

"It uses a litre of fuel every six seconds. The main tank holds 184 gallons, which is enough to go to Berlin . I've been to Berlin with her twice. Originally they had three more fuel tanks, one behind the pilot and two drop tanks, so they had a good range.

"When you arrive at Berlin after a two-and-a-half-hour flight, you think it's quite a long time. During the war, they'd have half-an-hour there, then fly back to England. Then the next day they'd have to go and do it all again."

Tough times that required tough men - and tough machines. There are not that many of either left. Their legacy endures, though - and you'll be honouring it next time you look up at an air show and see Maurice and Janie fly over.