The things we learn from commenters.
Not long ago this blog featured an item about a bunch of British Spitfires that were buried by U.S. troops in 1945 in Burma to keep them from being found by the Japanese. David Cundall thinks he found them and wants to attempt to dig them up. See Digging Up Spitfires on these blog pages.
Roy Bishop saw the item and left a comment telling the story of a British pilot who took out a German bomber over London then parachuted onto the roof of a house down the road from where Mr. Bishop lived during the war.
In a followup comment he identified the pilot as Ray Holmes who was credited with saving Buckingham Palace from the bomber's attack. Wikipedia has an entry about Mr. Holmes. Here's the meat of the story from that article:
Sergeant Holmes was flying a Hawker Hurricane fighter when he spotted a damaged Dornier Do17 bomber of KG 76 apparently making a bombing attempt on central London. Avoiding the bomber's return fire, Holmes made a head-on attack on the Dornier, however upon firing discovered his machine guns failed. Holmes decided to ram the bomber hoping his plane could withstand the impact and cut through it. He cut the tail off the bomber with his wing, causing the bomber to crash near Victoria tube station. His Hurricane was badly damaged, crashing near the grounds of Buckingham Palace. Holmes bailed out injured.
Now that was a gutsy move. Mr. Holmes died at the age of 90 in 2005.
The Spitfire is a beautiful plane and gets more attention these days than the Hurricane. But the Hurricane was a work horse, and it's credited with over 60% of the RAF air victories in WWII.
Thanks for a great story idea, Mr. Bishop.
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