Just days before premiering my film, my partner Gwennie and I were on holiday in Saint Louis, Missouri, USA, which has strong aviation associations with Charles Lindbergh and his first ever trans-Atlantic crossing by aeroplane in ‘Spirit of St. Louis’. The city lies 1,000 miles west of New York and 300 miles south of Chicago, on the Mississippi river.  

We visited the Overlord Military Collectibles (www.overlordmilitary.com) store in Saint Louis and were telling the owners about the film I’d made. To our amazement, they produced the military archive of an American Spitfire pilot who had been flying directly behind John Magee at the very moment when Magee had his fatal air-to-air accident over Lincolnshire. This pilot had witnessed John Magee’s fatal accident from just a few hundred yards away.