Just Jane the Avro Lancaster and the two brothers who bought an airfield to honor the one who never came home

Lancaster NX611, known as Just Jane, is one of only three Avro Lancasters in the world being restored to airworthy condition. She sits at East Kirkby airfield in Lincolnshire, England — the same wartime bomber station where Squadron 630 once launched missions over occupied Europe. The aircraft exists today because two brothers, Fred and Harold Panton, bought an entire airfield and spent more than forty years restoring her, all to honor their brother Christopher, a flight engineer killed during the war’s deadliest bombing raid.

Who Was Christopher Panton?

Christopher Panton was a twenty-year-old flight engineer from a Lincolnshire farming family. On the night of March 30, 1944, he climbed aboard Lancaster ME837 of 630 Squadron heading for Nuremberg, Germany.

The Nuremberg raid was the worst single night in Bomber Command’s history. 795 bombers set out. 95 were shot down — nearly twelve percent of the entire force, lost in a single mission. The weather forecast had been wrong. Instead of protective cloud cover, the bomber stream flew under clear skies with a half moon. German night fighters found them early.

Christopher’s Lancaster was among the ninety-five lost. His body was never recovered. He left behind two younger brothers, Fred and Harold, who were roughly eleven and younger at the time. The loss shaped the rest of their lives.

Why Did the Pantons Buy an Entire Airfield?

By the early 1980s, Fred and Harold Panton were grown men — farmers like their father. They had spent years thinking about how to properly honor Christopher. Not with a plaque or an annual wreath. Something that would make people viscerally understand what Bomber Command crews endured.

They found Lancaster NX611. Built by Austin Motors in 1945, she arrived too late for combat. After the war she served with the French Aeronavale until the mid-1960s, then returned to England, spent time as a gate guardian at RAF Scampton, and passed through several owners. By the early 1980s she was neglected and deteriorating.

The Pantons didn’t just buy the Lancaster. They purchased East Kirkby airfield itself — the station that had been home to 57 and 630 Squadrons during the war. Christopher’s squadron. The runways were cracked and overgrown, the control tower still standing, and farmland had reclaimed most of the site. But the bones of the place remained.

They named her Just Jane, after a popular wartime comic strip character that had served as a morale booster for the troops.

What Does It Take to Restore a Lancaster?

A Lancaster is not a weekend garage project. The aircraft is 69 feet long with a 102-foot wingspan, powered by four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines. The airframe is a semi-monocoque structure with thousands of rivets, miles of wiring, and hydraulic, pneumatic, and oxygen systems throughout.

When the Pantons began, NX611 was a shell. Instruments had been stripped, wiring cut, panels removed, turrets gone. In the pre-internet era of the early 1980s, finding parts meant word of mouth, written letters, and visits to scrap yards and surplus dealers, searching for components with the right Air Ministry stamps.

Merlin engines alone represent an enormous challenge. Each contains thousands of precision parts, and finding serviceable components in the modern era means scouring the globe — Argentina, where the air force flew Merlin-powered Lincolns into the 1960s; Australia, where some Lancasters ended up; and Canada, where the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum built a network of parts sources restoring their own Lancaster.

The Pantons worked methodically over decades: new wing skins where corrosion had eaten through, rebuilt undercarriage legs, overhauled engines. They were not wealthy collectors. They drove tractors during the day and turned wrenches on the Lancaster in the evenings, supported by volunteers and visitor donations.

How Did East Kirkby Become a Living Memorial?

The Pantons opened East Kirkby to the public in 1994 as the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre. From the start, they made Just Jane a taxi attraction — all four Merlins running, carrying passengers down the old wartime runway.

The experience is physical in a way no recording can replicate. Four Merlins at power produce a sound you feel in your chest. The exhaust carries a distinctive smell of glycol, high-octane fuel, and hot oil. Sitting inside the fuselage on canvas seats, with bare aluminum ribs curving overhead, visitors glimpse the world Christopher Panton knew on his last night.

Thousands visited annually — veterans at first, then their children and grandchildren, then school groups and aviation enthusiasts from around the world. Every penny went back into the restoration.

How Close Is Just Jane to Flying?

Fred Panton passed away in 2013, but Harold and the volunteer team continued the work. By the 2020s, Just Jane had progressed well beyond a taxi aircraft. New main spars were manufactured. The fuel system was rebuilt to modern standards. Flight controls were inspected rivet by rivet. The Merlins were overhauled to produce full rated power.

The Panton family and their team are working toward Civil Aviation Authority certification and flight testing. If she flies, Just Jane would become only the third airworthy Lancaster in the world:

• PA474 — operated by the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight
• FM213 (Vera) — flown by the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum
• NX611 (Just Jane) — at East Kirkby

Three flying examples out of 7,377 built. That number reflects both the brutality of the air war over Europe and the fragility of the machines that survived it.

Why Does This Restoration Matter?

The scale of Bomber Command’s sacrifice is difficult to grasp in the abstract. 55,000 aircrew killed out of 125,000 who served — nearly one in two. A Lancaster crew member in 1943 or 1944 had roughly a one-in-four chance of completing a thirty-operation tour.

What the Pantons built at East Kirkby is not a static memorial. It is a living, operational piece of the world those crews inhabited. When four Merlins light up on that Lincolnshire runway — the same concrete where bombers once lined up for the stream — the distance between the present and 1944 collapses.

Fred and Harold Panton spent their adult lives on this project because a twenty-year-old flight engineer never got to grow old. They couldn’t undo the Nuremberg raid. But they could ensure that people who hear those engines stop and think about the crews who flew into the dark.

Key Takeaways

• Just Jane (Lancaster NX611) has been under restoration at East Kirkby since the early 1980s, driven by Fred and Harold Panton’s mission to honor their brother Christopher, killed on the Nuremberg raid of March 30, 1944.
• The Nuremberg raid was Bomber Command’s costliest single operation — 95 aircraft lost out of 795 dispatched, a nearly 12% loss rate in one night.
• If restored to flight, Just Jane would become only the third airworthy Lancaster in the world, out of 7,377 originally built.
• The restoration was funded not by wealthy collectors but by decades of volunteer labor, visitor donations, and the Panton family’s own resources.
• East Kirkby’s Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre offers taxi rides in Just Jane, giving visitors a sensory connection to the bomber crews’ experience that no museum display can match.