NEARLY 60 years after a shocked schoolboy witnessed one of the saddest accidents of Britain's war in the air, he has won the right for two brave pilots to be commemorated.

Harry Spence was just 13 when he looked on in grim fascination as two RAF Hurricanes collided in mid-air on Valentine's Day, 1942, hurtling to the ground near his home in Tudhoe Colliery, near Spennymoor, County Durham.

Like others who watched the tragic spectacle, Harry believes that the pilots saved their community from disaster by sacrificing their lives to fly their planes clear of Tudhoe's pit cottages and shops.

At 22, one of the pilots, John Porter, was already a sergeant at RAF Usworth, near Sunderland, and taking part in a mock dog fight in the skies near his home village of Brandon, County Durham.

As he flew into one of the most complex manoeuvres of the exercise, coming towards him was a second Hurricane from Usworth, in the hands of 26-year-old Sergeant Clifford Scott, married with a young daughter, and a member of the Canadian RAF.

Now the courage of both men will be recorded on a plaque to be placed by Spennymoor Town Council in Tudhoe Cemetery.

Harry, 72, a keen amateur historian, came up with the idea as a tribute to the heroes of the skies.

He still remembers vividly the Saturday morning of the crash. Despite their sense 0of horror, he and his friend Harold Kirkup ran to where one of the aircraft fell and burst into flames, yards away from their homes.

Harry said: "We ran towards the pilot, but, of course, we could do nothing. We heard him say his prayers and then he died. I found one of his flying boots in a nearby gully, full of water."

Villagers found an old door and used it as a makeshift stretcher to carry the pilot's body away.

Harry added: "The pilot stayed in his plane until the last possible moment after avoiding the houses. They were both flying away from the village."

Three years ago, one of Harry's colleagues in the Spennymoor and District Local History Society, former fighter pilot Bill Fleming, laid a wreath at Tudhoe's war memorial in memory of the lost fliers