John ‘Paddy’ Hemingway: Last surviving Battle of Britain pilot dies aged 105.

The Prime Minister has paid tribute to the bravery and courage of the last Battle of Britain pilot who died aged 105 on Monday.
John ‘Paddy’ Hemingway, at the age of 21, was one of around 3,000 Allied airmen sent up to defend Britain from the relentless onslaught of the Luftwaffe bombing raids.
He was twice forced to bail out of his Hurricane fighter plane in the space of a week during the fighting.
At the end of the war in April 1945, when he was shot down over Italy, he evaded capture and made it back through enemy lines, dressed as a peasant, with the help of a ten-year-old Italian girl.
In the course of his service with the Royal Air Force, he was shot down four times, survived a plane crash and was even saved by a tree when his parachute failed to open.
Sir Keir Starmer in tribute said he was “saddened” to hear of the former pilot’s death.

also at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg1z42pkj8o

Lest we forget.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Initially, they were the only ones who stopped the German war machine and forced it to postpone and later abandon its campaign of conquest. No one before them was capable of doing so. It seems this pilot had nine lives, like a cat.

Never have so many owned so much to so few.
I salute you, Sir Keir Starmer.