(Image: Adrian Pingstone; Hurricane R4118 flies again)
This week, in the run-up to VE Day, we’ve featured several historic wartime aircraft, from restored Spitfire Mk.1a P9374 to a full-scale Hawker Hurricane replica, built for the 1969 Battle of Britain film, which is now displayed in New Zealand in commemoration of downed pilot James C.F. Hayter.
Today, on the 70th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, we thought we’d share the remarkable story of Hurricane R4118, an early Mk.1 variant which fought in the Battle of Britain during the summer of 1940, and remains airworthy to this day despite a rather inauspicious post-war career.
(Image: HurricaneDisplay.co.uk; dumped wreck of Hurricane R4118 in Varanasi, India)
Coded UP-W, Hurricane R4118 flew 49 combat missions and destroyed five German aircraft during World War Two, during which period it was rebuilt four times due to sustained enemy fire and a series of training accidents.
Of more than 14,500 Hurricanes produced between 1937 and 1944, R4118 is the only surviving airworthy Battle of Britain veteran remaining in the world.
(Image: Richard Stone; Hurricane production line during World War Two)
The brand new aircraft was delivered to No. 605 Squadron at RAF Drem in Scotland on August 17, 1940, before being posted to Croydon, Surrey, the following month. There, it was assigned to pilot Bob Foster who notched up three of Hurricane UP-W’s five kills during the Battle of Britain.
R4118 returned to Scotland in early 1941 and – like many well-worn combat veterans of its day – served primarily as a training airframe until December 1943, when it was crated up at Cardiff docks and shipped to India.
(Image: via War History Online; salvaging wrecked Hurricane R4118 in India)
But upon arrival in Bombay the aircraft was no longer needed and remained in its crate until the war in the Far East came to an end in 1947. Struck off charge, Hurricane R4118 was donated to the engineering school at Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi.
In the decades that followed, the demobbed aircraft was used as a teaching aid for students who had no idea about R4118’s illustrious past.
(Image: HurricaneDisplay.co.uk; detailed view of the Hurricane’s box-girder framework)
Then, in 1982, the Hurricane was discovered by British businessman Peter Vacher, who was scouring the region for vintage Rolls-Royce cars to restore. Mr Vacher made a note of the aircraft’s serial number before returning to the UK. Only then did he uncover R4118’s history as a Battle of Britain veteran with five confirmed kills to its name.
But by that time, the aircraft’s corroding, dismantled carcass had been dumped outside for scrap. Mr Vacher, of Abingdon, Oxfordshire, told the Daily Mail in 2014: “It looked like a pile of junk, but once I had found out what it was, I became obsessed with restoring it.”
(Image: HurricaneDisplay.co.uk; wings in place, Hurricane R4118 comes together)
He returned to India in 1996 to buy the Hurricane hulk, complete with original Merlin engine, for £25,000. Finally, after almost six years of bureaucratic wrangling, R4118 was shipped to the UK where, in June 2001, the wreck found itself under the professional care of Hawker Restorations in Milden, Suffolk.
(Image: HurricaneDisplay.co.uk; R4118’s fin and tail-plane construction)
The company’s founder, Tony Ditheridge, later remarked that: “This really is the Hurricane, totally unadulterated, not a ‘bitza’. A complete aeroplane, including all the ‘trinkets’. I don’t think we will see another like it.”
(Image: Airwolfhound; Hurricane R4118 flies again)
And so it was that, after an exhaustive three-year restoration programme, Hurricane R4118 took to the sky once more, 61 years after its last wartime flight and following decades of dereliction and decay.
Guest of honour at the aircraft’s official launch the following month was UP-W’s original wartime pilot, Bob Foster, who said at the time: “When Peter first called me up and said he had discovered one of my old Hurricanes I thought it was a wind-up. It really is unbelievable that, almost 65 years after the events of 1940, I have had the privilege of sitting in old R4118 again.”
(Image: Martin Graeff – website; parked at Duxford in 2009)
Wing Commander Bob Foster died in August 2014 aged 94. The following month Hurricane R4118 was offered for sale at a price of £2.5 million. Owner Peter Vacher told the Mail: “This Hurricane is a one-off. There is no other British plane like it from the Battle of Britain that is flying today. It was a labour of love to recover and restore it and I have enjoyed watching it fly for the past ten years.
“However, it is time for somebody else to take it on – and my hope is that it will stay in the UK or in Europe. It is such an iconic British plane. The sight and sound of it is the Battle of Britain. The public absolutely love it.”
(Image: HurricaneDisplay.co.uk; Hurricane R4118’s beautifully restored cockpit)
Related – 12 Abandoned, Wrecked & Recovered Aircraft of World War Two
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