Eight Hurricanes found in Ukraine

According to the British Broadcasting Corporation the remnants of no less than eight Hawker Hurricane fighters have been discovered buried in a forest in Ukraine. This was reported by the BBC on 2 July 2023. These remnants were accidentally found during a mine clearing operation south of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

After the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany in 1941, the country was in urgent need for fighters. The other Allies came to the rescue and the UK sent some 3000 Hawker Hurricanes to Russia which were paid for by the British. These deliveries were following so-called joint UK/US Protocols. In these protocols the British conditions were almost identical with the American lend-lease conditions.

It should be emphasized that the Americans paid for the US supplies, while the Brits paid for theirs. All and all Britain supplied 27% of the overall total of nearly 20,000 aircraft for the Soviet Union.

Although this support initially helped the Soviets, they seem not to have been very satisfied with the Hurricane, as they thought it lacked speed, firepower and armor.

At some stage of the war, the batch of Hurricanes, by then considered obsolete, were disposed of. They had been stripped of their instruments, radios, machine guns and any useful scrap metal. They were then dragged by tractors from a nearby airfield, broken up and dropped without ceremony into a shallow ravine. It is thought they were then covered with earth by bulldozers.

The National Aviation Museum of Ukraine is now in the process of painstakingly excavating the site by hand. Staff there aim to identify as much of the aircraft as possible so they can be reassembled and put on display.

But it will definitely take a lot of time before display is possible. The Hawker Hurricane was a plane of mixed construction, the aft part of the fuselage being all wood. Obviously the wooden parts of the unearthed planes have rotten away, so much money, time and craftmanship is necessary before any of these fighters will be finished!

photo: Asisbiz.com