On the 75th Anniversary of the Battle of Britain our minds are focused on the bravery, guile and skill of the RAF pilots that defended our shores from the Nazi Luftwaffe – but what about the men on the ground?

While undoubtedly those locked in battles, thousands of feet in the sky, or those flying dangerous raids miles behind enemy lines should be commended, there were others who played their own important part in the Second World War.

Leslie Johnson, 90, of the Wombwell Hall nursing home in Wombwell Gardens, Northfleet, was on one of those people.

Mr Johnson served as ground crew and an air rigger in the RAF Bomber Squadron No 207 and spent time at airfields in Hertfordshire, Suffolk and Lincolnshire.

The father-of-two and grandfather-of-three was only 19 when he joined the RAF and, for a number of his reasons, he could not be a pilot. Despite his disappointment, he did not give up. Today, the walls of his home are adorned with photos from those days.

He said: “I wanted to be with the air force but I didn’t have sufficient education to be a pilot or a navigator. I still wanted to be involved with the armed forces so I went to see the commanding officer.

“He said it was a pity that I had just missed out but asked what else I wanted to do. I said that I wanted to be a flight mechanic and he said, ‘That’s fine I can arrange that for you’. For six months I trained how to work on Lancaster bombers and the Vickers Wellington and other aircraft.”

Mr Johnson was part of a tight-knit crew that would be in charge of checking off aircraft – including inspecting wheels, tyres, controls, flaps, rudders and hydraulics – before they departed.

It was a job that had to be completed quickly but without mistake, as any sort of error could lead to malfunctions which could be fatal in conflict.

The veteran remembers one particularly close shave while working on a bomber. He said:“I was working on an aircraft and it narrowly missed being hit by shrapnel, which was lucky because it had a 2,000lb bomb on it.”

Mr Johnson worked on the Gravesend Reporter newspaper as an office junior before the war, but returned as a compositor, arranging type for printing, for 50 years.

It was very different from the fair share of death and destruction he witnessed during service.

He said: “One day I had just gone to tea and all of a sudden there was a terrific explosion. Somebody had done something wrong while storing a bomb and it had gone off and set the rest of the store off.

“We rushed off over there in the lorry and I had never seen anything like it. There was 12 people dead.”

Only two of the aircraft that Mr Johnson worked on were lost, one from a hit from an enemy aircraft and another from a crash landing when its undercarriage became damaged.

He enjoyed his time as part of an air crew but remembers the dark days too.

Mr Johnson said: “Some raids went well but one day we lost 28 men in four Lancasters, which was really sad. A lot of the ground crew shed tears.”