AA35510 Hawker Hurricane Mk.I - P3966 - Pilot Officer J.A. 'Paddy' Hemmingway

A man who came to represent the professionalism and devotion to duty shown by Churchill’s famous ‘Few’ during the summer of 1940, Irishman John ‘Paddy’ Hemmingway joined the Royal Air Force in March 1938 and by the outbreak of the Second World War, was flying Hawker Hurricane fighters with No.85 Squadron. 

Sent to fight in France with the Air Component of the British Expeditionary Force, Hemmingway helped No.85 Squadron post an impressive victory tally of 90 enemy aircraft destroyed in just eleven days over France, with his personal tally including both Heinkel He-III and Dornier Do-17 bombers destroyed.

Hemmingway and No.85 Squadron continued to challenge the Luftwaffe throughout the Battle of Britain, however, Paddy was forced to bale out of two Hurricanes during this period, once over English soil, the first pilot from his squadron to do so, and with his crashed Hurricane being the subject of a future excavation attempt in 1987. 

Hemmingway would be forced to take to his parachute four times during his wartime career, but put his survival down to Irish luck – so many of his fellow pilots didn’t enjoy the same luck. When John ‘Paddy’ Hemingway passed away in March 2025 at the age of 105, he was the last surviving fighter pilot from the Battle of France and Battle of Britain, the nation’s last remaining link to a generation to whom we will always owe so much, finally rejoining his old squadron mates in the dispersal hut.