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| Flt Sgt Copping’s aircraft sits where in came down in 1942 |
The well-preserved remains of an RAF
Kittyhawk fighter have been discovered in the Egyptian desert, reports The Daily Telegraph.
The aircraft was found more than two months ago by Jakub Perka, a Polish oil worker, at a remote place called Wadi al-Jadid.
There was no trace of the 24-year-old
pilot, Flt Sgt Dennis Copping, who was the son of a dentist from Southend in Essex.
Flt Sgt Copping, of 260 Squadron, went missing on 28 June 1942 and appears to have executed a near-perfect emergency landing, perhaps after
becoming lost and running out of fuel, and to have survived the crash.
He rigged a parachute as an awning and
removed the aircraft's radio and batteries, but then apparently walked off into
the desert in search of help.
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| The Kittyhawk with well-preserved camouflage scheme |
David Keen, an aviation historian at the
RAF Museum, says the pilot broke the first rule of survival in the desert,
which is to stay with your plane or vehicle.
Mr Keen says of the many thousands of
aircraft which were shot down or crashed during the Second World War, very few
survive in anything like this condition.
He said: "Nearly all the crashes in
the Second World War, and there were tens of thousands of them, resulted on
impact with the aircraft breaking up, so the only bits that are recovered are
fragments, often scattered over a wide area.
"What makes this particular aircraft
so special is that it looks complete, and it survived on the surface of the
desert all these years. It's like a timewarp."
The RAF Museum has a P40 Kittyhawk on
display, but it has been put together from parts of many different aircraft.
Recovering Flt Sgt Copping's plane will not
be easy. It is in a part of the desert which is not
only remote but also dangerous, because it is close to a smuggling route
between Libya and Egypt.
The British authorities are trying
to find out whether Flt Sgt Copping, who is commemorated on the Alamein memorial, has any surviving close relatives, because
if his remains are found a decision will need to be made about what to do with
them.
