Battle Of Britain Hurricane Just Found, To Be Excavated And Possibly Restored

Battle Of Britain Hurricane Just Found, To Be Excavated And Possibly Restored | World War Wings Videos

Photo Credit: SkyNews

Exciting news for the warbird community as a recovery team in Essex, a county in southeast England, found a Hawker Hurricane some 30 feet underground after decades of searching for it. Using specialized machinery, the team is now carefully removing all the pieces of the aircraft, some of which you can see in the news report from Sky News below.

Pilot Officer Paddy Hemingway

The reason this particular aircraft could be located is that the pilot who flew it is still alive and well. Paddy Hemingway, now 99, was 21 at the time he bailed out of his Hurricane after being shot down by a group of Messerschmitts. He got hit from behind and with his engine giving out, Hemingway decided to bail out at about 17,000 ft.

A picture of Paddy Hemingway in World War II. | Photo Credit: aviationmuseum.co.uk

This all happened on August 26th, 1940 but nearly 8 decades later, Paddy still remembered where his aircraft went down. That memory mixed with the latest imaging technology gave the team of excavators a really good shot at finding the plane and they did.

A snapshot of the yolk of the hurricane. | Photo Credit: SkyNews
The site of the dig. | Photo Credit: SkyNews

As you see in the pictures above, many of the parts are very well preserved because of the mud the Hurricane settled in, so there is a really good chance it’ll be fully restored. We will follow this story as more details emerge.

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