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Wing Commander Brendan Eamonn Fergus Finucane, DSO, DFC & Two Bars (/ f ɪ ˈ n uː k ə n / fin-OO-kən; 16 October 1920 – 15 July 1942), known as Paddy Finucane among his colleagues, was an Irish Second World War Royal Air Force (RAF) fighter pilot and flying ace—defined as an aviator credited with five or more enemy aircraft destroyed in aerial combat.
Audio recording of Spitfire fly-past at the 2011 family day at RAF Halton, Buckinghamshire Supermarine Spitfire G-AWGB landing at Biggin Hill Airport, June 2024. The Supermarine Spitfire is a British single-seat fighter aircraft used by the Royal Air Force and other Allied countries before, during, and after World War II.
Fighter aces in World War II had tremendously varying kill scores, affected as they were by many factors: the pilot's skill level, the performance of the airplane the pilot flew and the planes they flew against, how long they served, their opportunity to meet the enemy in the air (Allied to Axis disproportion), whether they were the formation's leader or a wingman, the standards their air ...
The public's first sight of the Spitfire in RAF colours was on Empire Air Day, on 20 May 1939, during a display at Duxford in which the pilot "belly-landed" his aircraft, having forgotten to lower his undercarriage and was fined £5 by the Air Ministry. By the outbreak of the Second World War, there were 306 Spitfires in service with the RAF ...
He was later assigned to the Supermarine Spitfire-equipped 52d Fighter Group in Sicily. [11] On February 9, 1944, on his 59th mission, his malfunctioning Mark V Spitfire was shot down by Siegfried Lemke, a pilot of Jagdgeschwader 2 [12] in a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 off the coast of Southern France, and he was taken prisoner. [13]
[25] [26] [27] [page needed] Two days later it was the Reggianes who attacked him and badly shot up his Spitfire. Beurling's aircraft was "riddled by better than 20 bullets through the fuselage and wings". "An explosive bullet nicked my right heel", he recalled. [28] On 22 July, Beurling lost his best friend in Malta, French-Canadian Pilot Jean ...
After his retirement he became a prolific author, chronicling the Spitfire and its legacy through: Spitfire: A Test Pilot's Story (1983), [2] [14] and Birth of a Legend: The Spitfire (1986). [ 3 ] Having retired with his wife Claire to the Isle of Man , Jeffrey Quill became involved with an annual lecture given by the Association of Manx Pilots ...
Flying the Spitfire Crook participated in the Battle of Britain, flying with No. 609 Squadron RAF (at the time this was a squadron of the Auxiliary Air Force). He initially joined the squadron on 22 September 1938 as an acting pilot officer, [1] this rank was confirmed on 4 May 1940, [2] and later further back-dated to 9 December 1939. [3]