Tue, Jun 01, 2004
British Fighter May Have Stopped German Bomb Run On Buckingham
Palace In WWII
As the Battle of Britain
raged at its worst during World War II, British Hurricane pilot Ray
Holmes faced a terrible choice. He was out of ammunition and had
spotted a German bomber headed for Buckingham Palace in London.
It was September 15th, 1940. A strike on the royal residence
would undoubtedly have sent British morale down the drain. Holmes
figured he had just one choice: Ram the Dornier.
That's just what he did. Then he bailed out.
His Hurricane sliced through the Dornier's empennage. The bomber
crashed into Victoria Station. Holmes' Hurricane slammed into
Buckingham Road, in London's city center, at almost 350 miles an
hour. It was pretty much buried under a water main. The road was
paved over and the wreckage never recovered.
Until now.
Archeologist working at the crash site Monday unearthed the
Hurricane's engine, rudder, control panel and other pieces as
Holmes, now 89-years old, looked on.
"Well it's such a mess that it is hard to realize that it came
out of the airplane," he told a Channel Five TV show documenting
the dig as he watched work crews unearth the Rolls Royce
engine.
The wreckage will go on display at Westminster's "West End at
War" festival June 12-13. Footage of the aerial battle will be
shown on a big screen at Leicester Square. Afterwards, the wreckage
will go on permanent display at the Imperial War Museum.
The excavation has been the pet project of archeologist
Christopher Bennett for a dozen years. Sunday's discovery of the
wreckage and Monday's excavation were "the culmination of a project
that has taken hundreds of hours of work," he said.
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