For almost 70 years, stories have been circulating about pilot Bruce Hancock, who is believed to have foiled an attack on an RAF base by ramming a German bomber with an unarmed training plane.

Tomorrow, regulars at the Inn for All Seasons near Burford will keep his memory alive by competing for one of the country’s most unusual and poignant golf trophies – shrapnel from a bomb carried by the German plane.

During one of the bloodiest days of the Battle of Britain on Sunday, August 18, 1940, Sgt Hancock, 26, a trainee bomber pilot, was practising night flying in an Avro Anson training plane when he encountered the Luftwaffe Heinkel He 111.

Observers on the ground said the German plane opened fire on Sgt Hancock before he deliberately flew his plane into the Heinkel.

Sgt Hancock and the four German airmen were killed when the planes fell to the ground near RAF Windrush, just across the boundary with Gloucestershire to the west of Burford.

Tomorrow the Wychwood Golf Club, at Lyneham, near Shipton-under-Wychwood, will host a tournament between the pub and a team from the Sherborne Arms, in the Gloucestershire village of Aldsworth, with the unusual trophy at stake.

The chuck of metal from the bomb was donated by a chauffeur working for Lord Sherborne.

The two Cotswolds pubs will play for the trophy – which is estimated to weigh 100lb – for the 31st time.

The Inn for All Seasons landlady Heather Sharp, 40, said: “Younger people don’t ever tend to think about what happened in the war and the sacrifices people made.

“This is a way of keeping the memory of this man’s brave actions alive.

“I’ve never heard of anyone playing sport for a piece of shrapnel before and it’s got to be the heaviest trophy going as well, because I can only just about lift it up.”

Her husband Matthew, 48, whose family have owned the pub for 24 years, said: “It’s a special trophy and has a long history.

“There’s rumours that the bomber was coming over to Brize Norton, although the airfield wouldn’t have been as big at the time, or that it was coming to hit the RAF base at Moreton-in-Marsh, but no one really knows.”

There is a memorial to Sgt Hancock in Windrush village church.