The Avro Vulcan was meant to be the star of the show. The promise of seeing the Cold War bomber making its final flight across Sussex skies had brought thousands to the airfield.
The Spinettes were singing wartime medleys and visitors wandered in the sunshine, admiring Spitfires and Hurricanes and looking at their watches in anticipation of the Vulcan’s big moment at 2.05pm. “Happy Landings chaps,” tweeted the RAF Association.
Ten miles away in Brighton, Caroline Schilt waved goodbye to her son. With his football kit bag under his arm, Jacob climbed into the Vauxhall Corsa of Matthew Grimstone and the old school friends set off for their match at Worthing United.
“Matt was picking them up as usual and off they went,” said Mrs Schilt, 55.
The geography graduate had recently won a club trophy, which sat on his parents’ mantelpiece. His whole family — his parents, 87-year-old grandfather and girlfriend, Megan Duffy, 22 — would follow them in another car.
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Further along the coast, Rebecca Sheen waited at her home in Goring-by-Sea for the chauffeur who was going to drive her the six miles to her wedding at Findon Manor. She and her father would be arriving in a cream and black Daimler limousine and the man behind the wheel would be Maurice Abrahams, a former police officer. He put on his grey, peaked chauffeur’s hat, and set off down the A27 for the last time.
Tony Brightwell, 53, was named yesterday as the eighth victim. The NHS manager, who had a pilot’s licence, was so excited about seeing the Vulcan that he cycled six miles to the show.
“I watched him cycle off into the sun on his treasured Ridgeback bike to watch the air show at Shoreham for a couple of hours, but he never came home,” said his fiancée, Lara.
Mark Reeves pulled up on his motorbike on the same stretch of road, in search of the best vantage point. He wasn’t the only motorcyclist out. Mark Trussler, a father of four, was riding his black bike on the dual carriageway. He has not been heard from since.
Keen not to waste such gorgeous weather, Matt Jones decided to leave the building site where he worked early. At 1pm, the personal trainer, who had a tattoo that read “Everybody dies but not everybody lives”, jumped in his silver BMW with Daniele Polito, and began their fateful journey to the beach.
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Ninety miles away in Essex, Andy Hill climbed into the cockpit of the Hawker Hunter and took off. Twenty minutes later, all eyes were on the Hunter as he began his loop.
The black plume of smoke scattered the seagulls. As the Schilts drove to the football, Jacob’s girlfriend received a call: the game had been cancelled. As soon as Megan saw the crash scene on Twitter, she recognised Matthew Grimstone’s car: “There was no way he would have got out of it.”
Clutching her phone, she scrolled through pictures of Jacob and her and was able to smile. “We were in love,” she said. “We would have moved to Brighton and got married. Right now we have waves of grief; we all cry and then we hug each other and then we go quiet.”
“He was just a lovely young lad,” said his father, Robert, 61, a retired science teacher, who said the immediate shock reduced them to “gibbering wrecks”.
Mr Schilt said: “I don’t know what we’re going to do over the next few days. We’re just pacing around, smoking endlessly and drinking tea until we feel sick.”
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At the Grimstone household, the family dog, Sky, moped by the feet of Matt’s mother, Sue. “Matt has been taken from us at just 23 and we still think he is going to walk through the front door any minute now,” said his father, Phil.
Assistant chief constable Steve Barry of Sussex police told Sky News last night that although the authorities want to “help the families understand as much as they can what happened to their loved ones”, some of the victims may never be found and identified.