JOHN IS 9TH LIVING
HE’S one of the last surviving heroes of the glorious Few who saved Britain from a Nazi invasion.
But Battle of Britain pilot John Hemingway has been missing – presumed dead – from the official roll of honour naming the handful of airmen still alive.
The oversight went unnoticed until a member of John’s family contacted the Battle of Britain Fighter Association to reveal that at 98 he was very much alive and well.
It means there are now NINE living Battle of Britain heroes – not eight, as previously thought.
The family pointed out that John, awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery and shot down four times in the Second World War, was enjoying a quiet, well-earned retirement in his native Ireland.
The nine men are the sole survivors of nearly 3,000 British and Allied pilots whose heroic defence of Britain in our darkest hour was immortalised by Winston Churchill when he said: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
John’s son, film production boss Brian, 66, of Guildford, Surrey, describes his dad – Ireland’s last remaining Battle of Britain pilot – as a “reclusive sort of guy” who rarely talks about his wartime exploits.
TICKLED
He said: “He’s not particularly interested in the past. Like so many of his generation, he doesn’t feel as though he did anything special.
“But he likes the idea he’s one of the last nine and he’s tickled by the fact that he’s the last known Irishman to have fought in the Battle of Britain.
“He’s loved and he’s not forgotten and that’s the way he likes it.”
Dublin-born John joined the RAF in 1938 and was posted to France when war against Germany was declared, providing air support for the British Expeditionary Force.
In May 1940, after downing his first enemy plane, a Dornier bomber, his Hurricane fighter plane was hit by antiaircraft fire and made a forced landing.
In the frantic days of the Battle of Britain, between July and October 1940, he twice had to bail out – the first time after intercepting a flight of German Junkers over the North Sea, where he was rescued by a passing ship. John, speaking in 2011, said: “I was after what I thought were JU88s