Dakota flight is reminder for Ken

A former RAF wireless engineer from the Black Country relived his role in one of the first major international crises of the Cold War when his family took him on a flight of fancy.

Ken Parkes, from West Bromwich, worked on the radio equipment on the Dakota DC-3 planes during the height of the Berlin blockade in 1949. As part of his forthcoming 80th birthday celebrations his family took him on a 20-minute flight in one of the great planes. He could be one of the last to do so as a change in EU regulations is set to end its commercial flying.

The historic transport plane first flew in 1935 and 12,000 were called into action during the Second World War, but it will carry its last passengers in Britain later this year after EU air safety regulations made it too costly to keep it going.

Over the next few months the Dakotas will embark upon a final tour of 18 British airports.

Mr Parkes, from Bexley Grove, took his flight from Coventry airport with his wife Marie and son Martin and his wife Elaine on Sunday. His wife Marie, 79, said: “I saw an advertisement about it in the Express & Star and thought he would love it – and he did.”

Mr Parkes spent two-and-a-half years in the RAF based at Oakington, Cambridge, as part of national service requirements. In 1949, when he was working on the radio equipment on the Dakotas, the planes were called into use to bypass the Berlin blockade. The Allies – made up of Britain, the US and France – bypassed a Soviet blockade on the Allied-occupied sectors of Berlin, by supplying essential supplies by air. The mission also became known as the Berlin airlift.

Mr Parkes, who went on to work for BT as an engineer after leaving the RAF, said: “I always liked the plane.”