Remembering John Hemingway, Last Battle of Britain Irish Pilot Has Died Aged 105

[Ladybbird]

Remembering John Hemingway, Last Battle of Britain Irish Pilot Has Died Aged 105, in His Home in Dublin

Last surviving pilot of Battle of Britain has died, severing the last living link to the few thousand men who fought the NAZI air force to a standstill amid fears Britain might be forced to capitulate during early months of WWII.

ITV News 25 MAR 2025





John Paddy Hemingway, an Irish national who enlisted in the Royal Air Force before the war began, died Monday at his home in Dublin, the RAF said. He was 105.


Hemingway was just 20 years old when he and his comrades in the Royal Air Force took to the skies to fight off wave after wave of Nazi aircraft that sought to pound Britain into submission during the summer and autumn of 1940.

In August of that year, when German bombers were relentlessly targeting airfields in southern England and the outcome of the battle was still in doubt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill famously stood before the House of Commons to pay tribute to the young pilots who were defending Britain.

The gratitude of every home in our island, in our empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the world war by their prowess and by their devotion, Churchill said.





''Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few''





Young Winston Churchill in Rare Photograph, 1890s






Britain has ever since revered the few for saving the country during its moment of peril. The Battle of Britain Memorial on the English Channel coast lists the names 2,941 Allied airmen who took part in the battle.







https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRhIX2bJIiM