WARTIME flying gear once used by a North Yorkshire fighter pilot who shot down a German bomber which had attacked Buckingham Palace has been sold at auction for £1,600.

Financial circumstances forced the owner of the items, which belonged to Wetherby-born Battle of Britain hero James “Ginger” Lacey – including a leather flying helmet, oxygen mask and goggles – to put them up for auction.

They were given to Squadron Leader Lacey’s last flying pupil, Chris Lodder, by the fighter pilot’s wife following his death in 1989, aged 72, and formed part of a webcast collectables auction at Arthur Johnson & Sons in Nottingham on Saturday.

The goggles bore the dents caused when the RAF ace was once forced to bail out of his plane.

Mr Lodder was taught to fly by Sqn Ldr Lacey during his time as an instructor in Bridlington in the 1980s.

He said: “I had a heart attack a couple of years back and I’m only working part-time, so it’s a case of being stuffed for money.

“I had a word with his daughter, Min, about it, because I obviously feel really bad about it, but she said he would have said ‘It’s only a hat – get rid!’”

Sqn Ldr Lacey, a former pupil at King James’s Grammar School in Knaresborough, ended the Second World War with a tally of 28 destroyed enemy aircraft to his credit, 18 of them gained while he was flying a Hurricane during the Battle of Britain to make him its second-highest ace.

He was also one of the few RAF fighter pilots flying at both the start and end of the war.

As well as once making two Messerschmitt fighters collide with each other, in September 1940 he chased and shot down a Heinkel III bomber after it targeted Buckingham Palace, despite having been told not to fly in the thick fog.

Mr Lodder said: “That was the one which really mattered to him.”

He said Sqn Ldr Lacey’s first taste of war came in France in 1940 as part of the British Expeditionary Force, where he witnessed the German Blitzkrieg onslaught which made him determined to fight an invasion of Britain.

Mr Lodder said: “He was a Yorkshire lad from Wetherby and he said he’d never seen anything like it in his life.

“He got back to England and decided ‘they’re not coming here’, and that was him – sheer bloodymindedness. He wasn’t bothered about tallies, he just wanted to stop them.”

Min Lacey said her father would have approved of the sale and joked that she hoped his former possessions would be bought by “an exotic multi-millionaire like Steven Spielberg who will find out about my dad’s life and make a film about it!”