At around noon on September 15, 1940, a mass raid of Luftwaffe bombers had been intercepted over the skies of London.
On that day, RAF Flight Lieutenant Ray Holmes spied a solitary Dornier aircraft flying towards Buckingham Palace. With his Hawker Hurricane fighter, P2725, out of ammunition, Holmes took decisive action and rammed the bomber out of the sky.
He managed to escape from the falling wreckage and open his parachute; meanwhile, the German aircraft crashed on the forecourt of Victoria railway station. It marked a pivotal moment in the war – Buckingham Palace,
a symbol of Britain, had been successfully defended.
Some 64 years later, special metal sourcing partners, TMB Art Metal (named after the squadron code of this most famous of Battle of Britain Hurricanes), excavated the remains of P2725 from its crash site under Buckingham Palace Road.
A painstaking recovery of its wreckage allowed us to create the C9 P2725 TM-B Limited Edition: a part of its aluminium Merlin engine has been cut and sits proudly behind museum-grade crystal in its backplate, where a detailed map of central London has been engraved, its crash site highlighted in red.
Holmes’ bravery was just one example of the courage displayed by members of the RAF defending their nation that day; so much so, that September 15 later became known under a different name: Battle of Britain Day.
I have 2 of 100.