MANY will have found the spectacle of the Lancaster and Spitfire aircraft over York inspiring.

Keith Isaac (Letters, July 9) points out that “the Lancaster bomber is woven into the fabric of this region”.

May I add “..but not as much as the Halifax”? He mentions that many Lancasters flew from airfields in this area. Some did, but nowhere near as many as the Handley Page Halifax, which dominated Yorkshire-based squadrons.

An impressively versatile and adaptable machine, the Halifax was even more numerous than the Lancaster in No. 6 Group Bomber Command, the Canadian group, some of whose units operated the “Lanc” for a time. It was mainly the Halifax that crowded the skies of Yorkshire, hence such unofficial nicknames as “the White Rose Bomber”.

If readers would like to gain a dramatic impression of the Halifax aircraft, its capabilities and performance, how to safely land this four-engined giant (by 1940s standards), their valiant crews and those on the ground that kept them in the air, and where they flew from, demonstrating how much part of the fabric of this region they once were, look no further than the Yorkshire Air Museum at Elvington.

Derek Reed, Middlethorpe Drive, York.