Another dose of history as this Hawker Hurricane is in St. Sampson's square all week to commemorate the action of French hero, Yves Mahe during the" Baedeker" raid on York. He noticed York was in flames and......He immediately dived in with his Hawker Hurricane, with all 8 machine guns blazing and quickly set his sights on a Heinkel He111 bomber, shooting it down in flames into the River Ouse in the City. One of the bombers, a Dornier Do17, later crashed near Castle Howard.
Yves Mahé’s intervention was just in the nick of time, as the bombers were lining up to attack Rowntrees Main Factory which, unbeknown to anyone, had a secret ammunition filling area containing hundreds of tons of high explosive. The outcome would have been catastrophic to the whole northern part of the City..
@pyrrhula Thank you. We are fortunate that some of these planes are preserved, or that replicas have been made to remind us what they were like. Katharine
