I’m 104 and the last survivor of the Battle of Britain – I want to live to 106 to see my crashed plane fly again
THE last of The Few is 104 years old today – and he is getting a very special birthday present.
Group Captain John “Paddy” Hemingway is the only surviving pilot of the 2,937 who helped to win the Battle of Britain.
And now the plane that the Irishman was flying when it was shot out of the sky is being restored — making it one of the most important artefacts of the air campaign.
As Paddy celebrates his birthday at his care home in Dublin, The Sun was given exclusive access to the restoration work in progress.
At 3pm on August 26, 1940, during one of the toughest weeks of the air war to save Britain from German invasion, Paddy was shot down over the Essex marshes.
He managed to bail out but his Hawker Hurricane fighter — number P3966 — hit the ground at 400mph, burying itself nearly 40ft deep in the soggy sea bog close to Pitsea.
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Paddy landed safely near the Barge pub, was found by the local Home Guard and by 10.30pm was back with the men of 85 Squadron to fight another day.
But for more than 50 years P3966 lay buried — only a dip in the earth giving a clue as to what lay beneath.
In the 1980s an attempt was made to dig it up, but at the time the wreckage was found to be too deep to recover.
Then, in 2019, a team finally pulled out the remains of P3966, including the control column — still set in the “fire” position that Paddy had engaged to shoot at a German Dornier Do 215 light bomber that would bring him down.
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In a hangar at Elmsett Airfield in Suffolk, P3966 is being slowly restored from scratch, by a team of highly skilled engineers from Hawker Restorations.
After almost a year of painstaking work, the fuselage, wings and cockpit are now taking shape.
As many of the original parts as possible will be retained — including bullet-riddled armour and the manufacturer’s plate with the registration number
Experts believe that when it is completed in two years’ time, P3966 will not only be priceless but possibly the most prized restoration from the Battle of Britain, which ran from July until October 1940.
Chief engineer Peter Johnson says: “It’s certainly the most important plane that Hawker have restored.
“It’s not only a Battle of Britain aeroplane but, remarkably, the pilot is still with us.”
At his care home, father-of-three Paddy has seen photos of the restoration of his old plane taking shape.
He says: “I’d love to get to my 106th birthday and see P3966 take to the skies once again. I’ve never forgotten that day when I was shot down over Pitsea Marshes. I still get flashbacks of smoke and burning rubber. I think we lost 11 pilots that time.
Life-size statue
“You had to be lucky. I had bags of luck, and here I am. It’s either being Irish or being lucky — one or the other. If you are both, you are really lucky.”
Incredibly, after nearly 80 years in the marsh mud, one of the plane’s eight Browning .303 machine guns was still in working order when removed, and had to be deactivated.
When The Sun visited the hangar, Paddy’s son Brian, 70, posed with one of the machine guns which will be fitted into the Hurricane’s wings.
Brian, of Guildford, Surrey, says: “It was a game of three-dimensional chess.
“Dad says they used to get into trouble for having dogfights with ME109s, as shooting down fighters would not win the war, and could lead to losing valuable pilots and planes.
"The job of the Hurricane pilots was to shoot down the bombers. The Battle of Britain is a unique moment in history and this plane symbolises it.”
Pilot Tom Smith, 28, bought the wreckage and the Civil Aviation Authority has given him permission to have the plane restored to airworthy standard.
Only one of the 740 Hurricanes that took part in the Battle of Britain is still flying today, so P3966 will be a truly historic sight when it takes to the skies once more.
'Being lucky'
But since the invasion of Ukraine 18 months ago, the price of spares and the special steels needed for this Hurricane have gone up dramatically, by fourfold in some cases.
Tom, whose family owns the former wartime airfield at White Waltham, Berks, says: “It is getting harder and harder to find the materials to make the parts and to find the people with the skills required to do it.
“You might not see another restoration from the ground up like this again.
“It could be hard to get another one in the air.”
Paddy, who flew in shirt-sleeves during the Battle of Britain, was photographed for Time magazine — and a photo of him looking up to the sky, thumbs tucked into his ‘Mae West’ lifejacket, has now been turned into a life-size statue.
It will be unveiled soon at the Kent Battle of Britain Museum, at Hawkinge near Dover.
During the Battle of Britain, Prime Minister Winston Churchill famously said: “Never was so much owed by so many to so few”.
Paddy Hemingway, the last of The Few, says: “It didn’t mean anything at the time, although we knew he was talking about us.
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"I suppose we must have felt proud.
“When all of your friends are gone, that still means something, even now.”
His six crashes
- May 11, 1940: Crash lands near Maastricht, Netherlands. Walks for three days back to base.
- August 18, 1940: Shot down off Essex, rescued from sea.
- August 26, 1940: Plummets 10,000ft before parachuting on to Pitsea marshes, Essex.
- May 13, 1941: Parachute fails to open properly but he lands in a dung heap in the garden of the poet Walter de la Mare in London.
- July 29, 1942: Heading to London to get a Distinguished Flying Cross from the King, his RAF jet crashes during take-off.
- April 23, 1945: Bails out over enemy territory in Italy, chased and shot at by Germans, but led to safety by a six-year-old girl.
