THIS week the Theatre Royal Winchester is staging Terence Rattigan’s classic romantic drama Flare Path, inspired and written during the height of the allied bombing campaigns of World War Two and based on Rattigan’s personal wartime experiences when he served as a radio operator and gunner on Sunderland flying boats with the RAF’s Coastal Command.

Few, however, will be aware that one of Rattigan’s first postings during the early part of his RAF career was spent in a Hampshire village.

Rattigan’s involvement with the RAF came about when he was encouraged to join up by a psychiatrist as a cure for writer’s block. Rattigan trained during the fury of the Battle of Britain and was stationed briefly at Hamble during his training in 1940, where the local flying club grounds were being used by the RAF to repair planes. It was during this time that he apparently became involved with the local Hamble Players and even helped cast their Christmas pantomime.

With his training complete, Rattigan was drafted onto the Sunderlands of Coastal Command operating 18-hour sorties over the Atlantic hunting for enemy submarines before being posted out to a squadron in West Africa.

It was during this long and perilous trip to his new posting that the fortunate survival of the first manuscript of Flare Path becomes something of a gripping drama in its own right.

After being shot at by a Heinkel on the first leg of the journey, the aircraft in which Rattigan and his crew were travelling in suffered a disastrous engine failure forcing the men to prepare for the worst in case they were forced to ditch the aircraft.

Rattigan ordered the plane to be lightened of everything – fixtures, fittings, luggage, the lot. The crew even jettisoned the picture frames of their sweethearts out of the aircraft. Just before slinging out his kit bag, Rattigan remembered his exercise book inside the bag containing the first act of Flare Path. Ripping off the heavy hard covers, he thrust the pages into his pocket where it safely remained until the crew limped on to the African coast where he later managed to write the rest of the play.

It was these experiences that Rattigan weaved into the fabric of the play to give this extraordinary story of a wartime love triangle its authentic reflection of wartime hardship and bravery that struck a chord with the tearful wives and sweethearts of the RAF servicemen who knew all too well the story it was telling when it played to the theatres of London for the first time in 1924.

Flare Path, which stars Lee Ockenden, Olivia Hallinan and Philip Franks, performs at Theatre Royal Winchester from 12 to 17 October. Tickets are available on 01962 840440 or at theatreroyalwinchester.co.uk.