The man who commemorates Britain’s wartime airfields

Mr Bannerman says his encounter with Langham airfield, near Blakeney Point, happened by chance in 1973.

His father had been stationed there in the 1950s and it was a last-minute decision for a trip down memory lane before the family went out for dinner that meant the younger Bannerman visited his first airfield.

About 20 different squadrons were stationed there over the course of World War Two, but three decades later the Bannermans found it being used for poultry farming with little in place to identify it as an old base.

“I more or less instinctively realised how incredibly important our airfields are but also how terribly badly they, and the personnel associated with them, were being treated,” said Kenneth.

He said he had probably visited about 2,000 airfields or former airfields since then and during one trip he saw a veteran in tears at the state a former base had been left in.

It made him even more determined to “right the wrongs” and have airfields recognised.