World War II fighter plane found in Egyptian desert

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.

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.