Joan and I went to the air show at Shoreham airport this weekend. She wanted to see a Lancaster bomber in flight just one more time.

According to Joan it was almost 60 years since she'd last seen a Lancaster ... 60 years since her days as a WAAF in RAF Bomber Command.

Then Joan was a girl in her early 20s, a girl with curly chestnut hair who had worked in the peaceful surroundings of a library before the outbreak of war.

Today her hair is white but her memories of life as a WAAF have never faded. And although I've known Joan for a long, long time, I realised on Saturday I'd never ever sat down with her and talked about those times.

Not that there was much opportunity on that particular day. Joan suddenly grabbed my arm. "Look, she's coming in now, over there to the east, can you see her?" she shouted into my ear.

There was a dot on the horizon and suddenly all eyes were on that speck, which, as it came closer, gradually became three distinctive objects - the legendary Lancaster accompanied by a couple of equally legendary fighters, a Spitfire and a Hurricane.

As the Lancaster flew past the crowds who had come to see her, Joan nudged me. "She looks good for a 60-year-old, doesn't she?" she said.

An elderly man next to us was unashamedly wiping his eyes and I caught a glimpse of Joan, too, wiping away what I took to be a tear.

"Huh, just a bit of grit," she said. Joan's never been one for sentimentality.

She and her twin sister were only 19 when they volunteered to join the RAF in 1939. They were clever girls and quickly learnt Morse code and became wireless operators.

Then, while her sister joined Fighter Command, Joan went to work on bomber stations where Lancasters, Stirlings and Wellingtons ("we called them Wimpys") were a familiar sight - and sound.

Joan worked in the signals room next door to the operations (ops) room. "We saw the air crews reporting back after successful raids," she told me, "but then there were times when we'd hear someone say: 'C for Charlie's two hours late and we've heard nothing . . . I don't think we'll see him again.'"

There were lighter moments, of course. The sight of a Flying Fortress (a grand old lady called Sally B) at Saturday's show reminded Joan of the time she tried to "hitch" a lift home on one of these American giants from her station in Suffolk to an airfield in Yorkshire.

"A member of the crew was standing by the plane and he was the handsomest man I'd ever seen, he looked just like Clark Gable!" she giggled.

"I asked him if they could take me with them. 'Sure honey,' he said, 'but you'll have to get your CO's permission first.'

"I went to the CO's office but he was on leave himself for a couple of days so I never got the lift and I never found out if it was Clark Gable I'd spoken to. But to this day I'm sure it was!"

As she told this story Joan smiled at the memory and her bright blue eyes sparkled. You could still see glimpses of the pretty girl she was in those days.

"You know what I'd like to do now?" she said as we walked towards the car park later that afternoon. "I'd like to have a ride in a helicopter."

And so you shall, I thought. But not today.

I put The Mother's arm through mine. "Come on, Joan," I said. "Time to go home."