(Image: Alan Wilson)
Featured among our recent guide to the world’s last remaining airworthy Hawker Hurricanes – and those potentially capable of flight – Hurricane Mk IIa Z2389 is currently under restoration to taxiing condition at Brooklands Museum near Weybridge, in South East England.
The fighter, which saw extensive use with Soviet Russia’s Red Air Force during World War Two, boasts – like many of its breed – a varied and compelling wartime history. Z2389 was early version of Sir Sydney Camm’s rugged design, built at Hawker Aviation’s Kingston upon Thames plant in 1940. Throughout its operational life, it was poised to serve with two air forces from western to eastern Europe.
In 1941, the Hurricane Mk IIa was passed through the hands of five different squadrons. Among the units it served with was No. 71, an all-American Eagle Squadron unit based at RAF Martlesham Heath in Suffolk. But by the following year, Z2389 had been crated up and shipped off to the Eastern Front, to do battle in the chilly skies above the Barents Sea.
(Image: Alan Wilson)
Z2389 was to become one of many Hawker Hurricanes retired from RAF service and shipped to the Soviet Union under a lend-lease agreement that saw the Red Air Force operate western-built fighters against Luftwaffe pilots in northern Russia. After arriving by sea at Murmansk, the aircraft was reassembled and pressed into service with 767 Regiment on the icy, inhospitable Kola Peninsula.
But the war came to an early close for the former Eagle Squadron fighter, which was shot down on June 20, 1942 during a fierce dogfight with two Messerschmitt Bf 109s and five Bf 110s. Z2389’s pilot, F/Lt Ivan Kalashnikov, escaped with his life and crash landing his stricken plane, which lay where it came to rest for the next half century.
Like many wrecked aircraft abandoned in the wake of World war Two, Kalashnikov’s aircraft was ultimately recovered and partially restored in St Petersburg. In 1997, after 55 long years, Hurricane Z2389 returned to the UK, arriving at Brooklands Museum in Surrey where a full restoration effort was launched.
(Image: calflier001)
Coded XR-T, the wartime fighter is once again resplendent in the green and brown camouflage colours of RAF Fighter Command. Thanks to a team of dedicated volunteers, Z2389 will ultimately be capable of taxiing under her own power, and perhaps one day take to the skies again, like various other Hurricanes that were shot down during the Second World War and brought back to life decades later.
For the time being, though, the aircraft is displayed as part of the ‘Brooklands in the Battle of Britain’ exhibition, telling the wartime story of this former Fighter Command base during the tumultuous summer of 1940.
Related – 12 Abandoned, Wrecked & Recovered Aircraft of World War Two
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