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Ray Holmes
Raymond Towers Holmes (20 August 1914 – 27 June 2005) was a British Royal Air Force fighter pilot during the Second World War who is best known for an event that occurred during the Battle of Britain. He became famous when he reportedly saved Buckingham Palace from being hit by German bombing by ramming his Hawker Hurricane into a Dornier Do 17 bomber over London. He was feted by the press as a war hero for saving the Palace. However, different versions of this event have been proposed.[1] Holmes became a King's Messenger after the war, and died at the age of 90 in 2005.[2] Early lifeRaymond Towers Holmes was born on 20 August 1914 in Wallasey, Cheshire. He attended Wallasey and Calday Grange Grammar School[3] and worked as a crime journalist at the Birkenhead Advertiser[4] before joining the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve in 1936 as their 55th volunteer.[5] Second World WarBattle of BritainIn June 1940 he joined No. 504 Squadron RAF. He became known among his flight comrades as "Arty" which was taken from the initials of his name R.T.  According to the now common account, on 15 September 1940, known as Battle of Britain Day, Sergeant Holmes was flying a Hawker Hurricane fighter when he spotted a formation of three Dornier Do 17 bombers of Kampfgeschwader 76 heading for central London, to make a bombing attempt. As he made an attack on one of the bombers, the bomber fired a flamethrower at him, and Holmes' windscreen was covered in oil.[7] The flamethrower, obviously intended for use on the ground, did not work as intended at 16,000 feet, producing a jet of flame only some 100 yards long. The oil did not catch fire, and instead covered Holmes' windshield. As the airflow cleared the oil away from his windscreen, Holmes saw that he was dangerously close to the Dornier, and ramming the stick forward, passed beneath the bomber.[7]
He attacked the second Dornier, causing a crew member to bail out.
 Holmes then spotted the third Dornier apparently making directly for Buckingham Palace. Holmes quickly climbed ahead of it, to avoid any machine-gun fire, then swung around to make a head-on attack. However, he ran out of ammunition, so Holmes decided to ram the bomber.
Holmes' plane began to dive to the left, and was no longer responding to the controls. As the Hurricane went into a vertical dive, he bailed out. As he climbed out, the air-stream caught him and smacked him down onto the roof of his Hurricane. Then, as he was thrown backward, his shoulder hit his own tail fin. When he finally managed to pull his ripcord, the jolt shook off his flying boots and he found himself swinging violently about. He watched the Dornier crash near Victoria tube station.[8] Holmes landed in a narrow back garden, and ended up dangling inside an empty dustbin.[8][9] The Dornier pilot, Feldwebel Robert Zehbe, bailed out, only to die later reportedly of wounds suffered during the attack.[1] The observer, Unteroffizier Hans Goschenhofer, and the gunner, Unteroffizier Gustav Hobel, were killed, while radio operator Gefreiter Ludwig Armbruster and flight engineer Unteroffizier Leo Hammermeister survived. Holmes was feted by the press as a war hero for his saving of Buckingham Palace. As the RAF did not practise ramming as an air combat tactic, this was considered an impromptu manoeuvre, and an act of selfless courage. This event became one of the defining moments of the Battle of Britain and elicited a congratulatory note to the RAF from Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, who had witnessed the event.[10] The bomber's engine was later exhibited at the Imperial War Museum in London. Later activitiesWhen recovered, he became part of No 81 Squadron, and was sent to the Northern Front near Murmansk in Soviet Russia to help train the Russian air force in flying the Hawker Hurricane. Here he claimed a further kill; a Bf 109 F. He married Elizabeth Killip in April 1941[5] and was commissioned as a Pilot Officer on 10 June 1941,[11] promoted to Flying Officer on 10 June 1942,[12] and Flight Lieutenant on 10 June 1943.[13] Returning from Russia, Holmes served as an instructor with 2 FIS, Montrose, from 1942 until 1944. He then flew PR Spitfires with 541 Squadron from February 1945. Post-warPersonal lifeAfter the war, he was a King's Messenger, personally delivering mail for Winston Churchill. After leaving the RAF in late 1945, he returned to journalism, joining his father's news agency covering Liverpool Crown Court for local and national newspapers.[14] He had two daughters with Elizabeth before she died in 1964. In 1966, he married Anne Holmes and went on to have a son and a daughter. He provided eyewitness testimony of the Battle of Britain in the "Alone" episode of The World at War. In 1989, he published his autobiography entitled Sky Spy: From Six Miles High to Hitler's Bunker.[15] Sixty-five years later, the wreckage of Holmes' Hurricane was discovered and excavated from the streets of London. The discovery was featured on the National Geographic Channel documentary, "The Search for the Lost Fighter Plane". Holmes also was mentioned in an episode of Battlefield Britain. He was awarded the Freedom of the Borough of Wirral in January 2005.[4][unreliable source?] He died on 27 June 2005, aged 90 at Hoylake Cottage Hospital after a two-year battle with cancer. He was buried in Rake Lane Cemetery, Wallasey. Postwar discussion of Holmes' attackThe story that Holmes deliberately crashed into the Dornier and that the German plane was attempting to bomb the palace has been challenged - notably by Alfred Price and Stephen Bungay. In one account, Zehbe developed engine trouble and lagged half a mile (800 metres) behind the main bomber stream. His Dornier attracted a swarm of fighters and was damaged. Goschenhofer and Hobel were killed before Zehbe and the others bailed out (Armbruster over Sydenham and Hammermeister over Dulwich). As Zehbe bailed out, he set the aircraft on autopilot.[16] His Dornier was therefore unmanned when Holmes rammed it. During its spinning dive, the gravitational force on the Dornier caused its bombs to be released, which hit or landed near to the Palace nearby, damaging the building.[17] Holmes' combat report of the day makes no mention of an intended collision with the Dornier. It said he made four attacks on the Dornier. He saw a lone crewmember bail out as he made his third attack and, during the last pass, he felt a "jar" which caused his aircraft to fall into an uncontrollable spin, and that he first believed the Dornier exploded beneath him, before seeing it crash while he was on his parachute. Over the years, this apparent unintended "jar" seems to have been transformed into an intentional collision.
Contrary to reports that Zehbe died of wounds suffered during the air attack, he may have been wounded by a civilian mob after landing near The Oval,[18] He was rescued by the army before dying of his wounds the next day. Zehbe was buried in Brookwood Military Cemetery.[19] See alsoReferences
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