Ace’s warplane uncovered
Kittyhawk found in Sahara was likely flown by Sask.-born Stocky Edwards
A Second World War fighter plane, just discovered in the Egyptian desert 70 years after it was crash-landed there by its British pilot, is generating excitement among vintage-aircraft experts in Canada who suspect the long-buried Kittyhawk P-40 was once flown by one of this country’s great aces in the air battles of North Africa.
Saskatchewan-born James “Stocky” Edwards, now 90 and living in Comox, is considered to be the “highest-scoring” living fighter ace in Canada, credited with 19 “confirmed kills” and many additional damaged and destroyed enemy aircraft on the ground.
Edwards’ wartime exploits while assigned to the Royal Air Force — like many other Canadian pilots — have been honoured by Vintage Wings of Canada, the Gatineau, Que.-based aviation heritage organization that restores antique aircraft and flies them at air shows around the country.
Among the group’s treasures is its Stocky Edwards Kittyhawk P-40, which was acquired from New Zealand and restored to match the markings of Edwards’ aircraft during the Desert War: the RAF 260 Squadron’s HS-B.
Remarkably, the relic discovered in March by an oil worker travelling in a remote part of the Sahara was marked with the same identifier: HS-B.
Vintage Wings spokesman Dave O’malley believes the newly discovered P-40 might be the plane Edwards was piloting before it vanished in June 1942 — while being flown by a British pilot to an Allied aircraft depot for repairs — and which was subsequently replaced by the successor HS-B.
It’s believed the British pilot, RAF Flight Sgt. Dennis Copping, was forced down in the desert after being hit by enemy fire.
Copping is believed to have survived the landing before dying in the desert.
O’malley said news of the aircraft’s discovery in western Egypt was initially treated skeptically by Vintage Wings. He said fresh discoveries of wellpreserved aircraft from the 1939-45 war are “extremely rare.”
But when the Polish oil-company worker credited with the discovery posted dozens of pictures to a photosharing website, O’malley and others determined the aircraft was a genuine relic of the Desert War — with a tantalizing Canadian connection.
“It seems possible that Stocky Edwards did fly it,” O’malley has written at the group’s website. “To say we at Vintage Wings are excited by this is an understatement.”
O’malley said he applauds suggestions that the plane be transported to a British museum and displayed unrestored, filled with sand, to give visitors a vivid sense of the perils of the North Africa campaign.