YOBS are forcing Battle of Britain veterans to consider selling their crime-hit club.

Sixty years after they helped knock Hitler's Luftwaffe out of the skies, the pensioners are coming under fire from vandals - and losing the fight.

Members of Middlesbrough's RAFA club will meet in special session next week to discuss putting the Woodlands Road club up for sale.

They have given up replacing windows repeatedly shattered with air gun pellets.

In one recent incident, a lout came into the club during a tea dance being held in the run up to next week's Battle of Britain commemorations and stole a pay phone in front of astonished veterans.

The cash-strapped committee cannot afford to refurbish the club with membership dwindling because of fear of crime.

A club spokesman said: "We get pellets through the window because we are ex-service people. We fought to give them freedom, but the individuals who are doing it were not worth fighting for.

"There is a special meeting of the members on Wednesday when they will be asked if we sell the place or keep it. We have seen this coming for some time.

"We're all getting on. I am 79 and most of the members are in their seventies or late sixties. If I had not got a car, I would not walk down the club at night with all the thugs about.

"We have just had some lout come in to the club during a tea dance and steal the pay phone. I went after him, but he got away.''

Regional RAFA branch development officer Alan Robson said selling the club was inevitable. He said: "It is a combination of things. It's the age of the members and the fact that Middlesbrough, along with many town centres, is sometimes not safe at night.

It's a sorry indictment on society that an organisation such as the Middlesbrough branch - part of a national charity - can be targeted by mindless thugs instead of giving these people the respect they deserve.''