No same one..
FLIGHT international, 2 March 1967
Page 308
Twenty-seven-year-old Mystery Solved
The history of the remains of a Hurricane
Mk 1 near Biggin Hill, Kent, the
subject of recent newspaper reports, is
at last known. Locals and a number of
enthusiasts have known for many years
that the aircraft lay north-east of the airfield
on a wooded hillside near Downe
village; it now consists only of the
engine, part of the starboard wing, bits
of elevator, and the reduction gear.
Attempts to trace the pilot proved
unrewarding until last week, when
Gp Capt T. P. Gleave (author of the
article “The Battle of Britain” in Flight
for September 16, 1965) read the news
stories and concluded that it was his
machine. It crashed on August 31, 1940,
after Gp Capt Gleave took off from
Kenley, with seven other Hurricanes of
253 Sqn, to intercept a raid on the sector
stations of Biggin Hill and Kenley. Following
a pass at a Junkers Ju88 his
aircraft was hit in a fuel tank and caught
fire. Badly burned, he baled out over
Cudham, but remembers seeing his aircraft,
in a flat spin, crash in a wood. On
that particular day his own machine was
unserviceable, so he had borrowed an-ij
other and had no record of its serial
number in his log-book.
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