Last surviving Battle of Britain pilot John ‘Paddy’ Hemingway remembers moment he was shot down

Last surviving Battle of Britain pilot John Hemingway recalls moment he was shot downRoyal British Legion Republic of Ireland

Transcript

00:00As Squad Leader Hill told us that the thing that's blowing up now, the war was on right

00:10from straight away from May the 10th.

00:15The British Army were going to advance through Belgium and hold them on the Meuse, but on

00:21the first day they were already over the Meuse and now it's shot down, I think, on the second

00:26day.

00:28Got off the ground and looking for Huns.

00:30I saw a Fieseler Storch and I thought it shouldn't be there, so I tried to attack it and it led

00:36me back to its guns.

00:39They clobbered me.

00:40Instead of that I turned west and footlanded straight away and I ploughed field and got

00:46away from my aeroplane as quickly as possible.

00:49I was walking west.

00:51I walked as far as Brussels and then spent hours on a railway, on a bridge, a road bridge

00:58waiting for a car and eventually a little Citroen turned up and we drove back to Lille

01:05and then I got back to the base and it had been bombed.

01:11A lot of the pilots were no longer, they weren't there, they'd been killed or a prisoner was

01:17shot down.

01:22We were covering Dunkirk.

01:25That is the time I was in 253 Squadron, but we didn't actually see Dunkirk itself.

01:31We were in the air further into France looking for Huns that might be attacking or retreating

01:39forces.

01:42My uncle, he was a major in the Royal Ulster Rifles on the beaches of Dunkirk.

01:48He insisted that everybody shave in the morning and parade, morning parade for breakfast,

01:54although breakfast was probably a grain of sand or something.

02:00But they all got aboard ship, waded out and got aboard some sort of ship and back to England.