RAF charity raises £30,000 at D-Day dinner

In excess of £30,000 has been raised for the RAF Benevolent Fund at a special dinner to mark 70 years since D-Day.

More than 250 attended the fundraising event, including veterans who served in the Second World War.

The recent London dinner will support the service charity, which spent over £18 million last year alone to support more than 60,000 people associated with the Royal Air Force.

The occasion also helped to honour the airmen who took part in the D-Day invasion, one of the pivotal moments in World War II.

"Air power was key to the success of D-Day. The strategic air offensive against Germany had shifted the battle to the skies above the Third Reich," explained Air Marsha Chris Nickols, controller of the RAF Benevolent Fund.

"When the Allied Normandy beach landings took place there was, initially, very little the Luftwaffe could do in response."

He reminded people that the fact the D-Day landings were a success made an opening for Western Europe to be liberated. Within the space of one year following the landings, WWII was over in Europe.

"Tonight, 70 years on, we remember the brave sacrifices of all involved in D-Day," he said.

Mr Nickols also honed-in on the individual story of Lee Walker, an RAF member who was there on D-Day.

Aged 94, he has recently started receiving support from the organisation, after he began to find things like taking a bath increasingly difficult. The charity provided adaptions like new furniture and a wet room, to help improve his home life.

"Lee was lucky, he survived D-Day, and we are delighted to have been able to help him lead a dignified and independent retirement," added Mr Nickols.

It was shortly after an even older war that the Fund was first founded. In the months following WWI in 1919, Lord Trenchard – the same man who founded the Air Force itself in 1918 – set up the charity.

As well as events to mark D-Day, there are many WWI themed events taking place this year, as it is now 100 years since that war first began, in 1914.