Hurricane that saved Buckingham Palace unearthed after 63 years
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Your support makes all the difference.An RAF fighter, which may have saved Buckingham Palace from a direct hit during the Battle of Britain, has been unearthed in central London.
Excavations began on Saturday morning in Buckingham Palace Road, Victoria, and the Hurricane's pilot, former Sergeant Ray Holmes watched as the engine was hoisted from its muddy grave on Sunday night.
The discovery really belongs to Christopher Bennett, an amateur aviation historian and archaeologist. Mr Bennett, 43, a photographer, said: "I'm totally elated. I've been working on this project for 13 years. This crash site was a result of one of the most famous incidents of the war and this Hurricane crashed on 15 September 1940, the day now commemorated as Battle of Britain Day. After all these years, the engine is still in remarkable condition, probably because of the oil around it."
Since a young age, Mr Bennett had been fascinated by the heroic actions of Sgt Holmes. At the tail end of the Battle of Britain, Sgt Holmes's courage saved the Palace after he spotted a German Dornier bomber lining up to attack the royal residence. Sgt Holmes, now 89, said: "I saw three Dorniers on their own. I shot one of them down. The other two turned round and I gave chase after them. All the other aircraft had disappeared. I discovered I was heading for this Dornier. When I fired, my guns didn't operate; my ammunition was used up." But the pilot, scrambled from Hendon with 504 Squadron, was determined to stop the Do17. "I took his tailplane off with my wing. His tail came off and he went nose down. But it had damaged my aerodynamics. I had to get out."
As the German plane plummeted to the forecourt of Victoria Station, Sgt Holmes baled out with his plane landing in Buckingham Palace Road.
"My boots had fallen off with the jerk of the parachute. I was heading for the electric rails of Victoria Station. Luckily, I missed those and headed to the roof of a three-storey house. I ended up dangling just off the ground with my feet in a dustbin." In the 1969 film, The Battle of Britain, the portrayal of Sgt Holmes had him land in a greenhouse.
At the time, his plane was too deep to be recovered and the hole was simply covered over. On Sunday, as the engine was raised to ground level during the Channel Five TV show, Fighter Plane Dig ... Live, Mr Holmes seemed underwhelmed. He said: "Well, it's such a mess that it is hard to realise it came out of the aeroplane."
The engine and mangled cockpit instrumentation will be displayed at the Imperial War Museum.
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