ALL HAIL THE HURRICANE

PLANE THAT REALLY WON THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN

Flying in his Hawker Hurricane above Hampshire one day in midAugust 1940, RAF pilot James nicholson was in a tense but expectant mood.

As the Battle of Britain raged in ever greater intensity over southern England, the 23-year-old was on his first combat mission. ‘i’d never fired at a german and was longing to have a crack at them,’ he wrote. But it was a german who struck the first blow.

On reaching an altitude of 18,000ft, nicholson’s Hurricane was suddenly hit by four cannon shells fired by a Messerschmitt 110 twin-engined fighter. The attack left him badly injured, with splinters in his eyes and blood pouring from his legs, while his plane was soon engulfed in flames.

But just as he prepared to bail out, the Messerschmitt, making a steep turn, came into his gunsight. in an incredible display of indifference to his agony, nicholson sank back into his seat and pressed the gun button. ‘i plugged him first time and i could see the tracer bullets entering the german machine,’ he recalled.

He kept up the pursuit against the stricken luftwaffe aircraft even as the conflagration in his cockpit began to peel the skin from his hands.

‘i pushed the throttle wide open. Both of us must have been doing about 400mph as we went down together in a dive,’ he recorded.

After one last burst from his Hurricane’s guns, nicholson watched the Messerschmitt plunge from