Hurricane flight with BBMF!

02/05/2007 by Pudsey.

Big exciting day today – I get to fly in a Hurricane … & not just any Hurricane but the BBMF one!! I must say that I have rather a soft spot for the Hurricane as it is the overlooked hero of the Battle of Britain – hmm! rather like me being overlooked for the photo shoot Lancaster flight!! There were more Hurricanes in the Battle of Britain & it got more ‘kills’, but nowadays that seems to have been forgotten & the Spits have all the glory (even though they are good too!!) A total of 1,715 Hurricanes flew with Fighter Command during the period of the Battle, far in excess of all other British fighters combined. Having entered service a year before the Spitfire, the Hurricane was “half-a-generation” older, and was markedly inferior in terms of speed and climb. However, the Hurricane was a robust, manouverable aircraft capable of sustaining fearsome combat damage before write-off; and unlike the Spitfire, it was a wholly operational, go-anywhere do-anything fighter by July 1940. It is estimated that its pilots were credited with four-fifths of all enemy aircraft destroyed in the period July-October 1940. Anyway we flew from Coningsby to Duxford arriving at 12:00 to a nice crowd of people all watching us – I did point out to F/L Parkinson that people must have found out that I was on board & that my fans had come out to greet me!! So now I have 30 mins on a Hurricane as well as my 1:50 on a Lancaster – ooh how I love saying that! So then Nigel how many hours do you have on a Lancaster or a Hurricane then?!! Oh how I love to go not one, but two better than Nigel

Posted in Diary | Print | 1 Comment »