The casualties of the Battle included a regrettably large number of pilots, who, when shot down, suffered terrible burns in the process. The cockpits of fighter aircraft often filled with petrol vapours. There was also a potential danger from the sighting of the fighters’ fuel tank just in front of the cockpit. The result was that all too often enemy fire not only damaged the aircraft but also led to the cockpit filling with flames and turning it into the equivalent of a blow torch. This meant that the pilot had to escape very rapidly if he was to avoid being burnt. In many cases the cockpit canopy was difficult to unlock. The result was that many a pilot suffered appalling burns to his face and hands.

To deal with this situation, a special unit was set up under a brilliant plastic surgeon, Sir Archibald McIndoe, who created a burns unit at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead, where victims could be treated.

Often the treatment required literally dozens of operations on the single patient. It was all a matter of affecting a series of skin grafts. Each one had to “take” before the next could be started. It was a terrible and very painful process. Where McIndoe was brilliant was, not only in his surgery which was ground breaking, but in his recognition that morale had to be kept up in very trying circumstances. He insisted that all the nurses at East Grinstead were of exemplary beauty. He was equally as committed to rehabilitating his patients into civilian life, even, in some cases, lending them money. He was knighted in 1947 in recognition of his work. McIndoes’ patients became known as McIndoe’s Guinea Pigs. They were disfigured for life, but they wore their disfigurement with great honour.