He was Australia’s deadliest Battle of Britain pilot. Now, his plane will fly again

Flight Lieutenant Paterson “Pat” Hughes shot down more German aircraft during the Battle of Britain than any other Australian pilot.

Now the wreckage of his crashed Spitfire X4009 will be rebuilt at Scone, in the NSW Hunter Valley, as part of a five-year project estimated to cost $7 million.

Over two months during the 1940 battle, the Spitfire ace from Cooma, NSW, had 14 “combat claims”, not including three shared with other pilots. Three days before his final mission, he shot down three Messerschmitt 110s, and was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Hughes had met 23-year-old Kathleen “Kay” Brodrick in a village inn near York, in February 1940. She said he reminded her of the Hollywood film star Errol Flynn. That evening he was carrying his Airedale terrier, named Flying Officer Butch, which, against the rules, he would take with him in the cockpit of his plane.

Hughes asked her to telephone him. Three days later he had to call her. With the looming shadow of war, they married (unbeknown to his parents) at a registry office in Cornwall in August. There was no honeymoon to speak of.

It was on a combat engagement five weeks later that his luck against the German air force, the Luftwaffe, ran out. He was only 22.

While he was chasing a Dornier 17 light bomber over Kent on September 7, 1940, the aircraft are thought to have collided and crashed. One report said a third of one wing on the Spitfire broke off. Another said an airman in the fighter bailed out but his parachute didn’t deploy. Hughes’ body was found lying on the lawn of a bungalow in a village near Tunbridge Wells.

Tony Hall, then aged four, was living in the village of Sundridge when the crash occurred above their home. Now 87 and still living in the village, he said his father Bob witnessed the crash. “The Dornier crashed into the river behind the waterworks,” he told the Herald.

“Hughes’ Spitfire crashed to the east of that. I don’t know if he was thrown out or bailed out, but his body landed in a back garden about 200 yards from where we lived. My dad saw it all happen. He was in the Home Guard. He said the Spitfire rammed the Dornier.”

The Spitfire wreckage, recovered from its crash site in 1968, languished in a museum. When the aircraft is rebuilt, it will be one of only four Mk 1 Spitfires flying worldwide.

The airframe is being reconstructed on the Isle of Wight with a grant of $150,000 from the Australian government. The Rolls-Royce V-12 Merlin engine is being built in the US and other parts will be produced by Sydney University’s engineering faculty using 3D metal printing technology.

The whole aircraft will be assembled in Scone by Hunter Fighter Collection Inc, a not-for-profit charity. The work will be done by Vintage Fighter Restorations, which has rebuilt other aircraft including Spitfires.

John Parker, public officer for the Hunter Fighter Collection, said it had about 400 kilograms of wreckage, or about 60 per cent of the aircraft.

“It is a very significant aircraft in terms of the remaining components we have to work with,” he said.

Ross Pay, chairman of Hunter Fighter Collection, says Hughes’ aircraft will arguably be the most historically valuable Spitfire to fly again.

Seeking donations and corporate sponsorship, he said: “The fact that the aircraft was only flown by Pat Hughes makes it one of, if not the most, famous and significant Spitfire restorations ever undertaken.”

Chris March is a distant cousin of Hughes and lives near Scone. “He was my grandfather’s first cousin,” he said. “I have visited Pat’s grave in Hull in Yorkshire. You would like to think there are some wealthy benefactors out there with enough interest in military aviation to support this undertaking. Pat’s story isn’t widely known. He went to Fort Street School in Petersham.”

After the crash Kay inquired about Flying Officer Butch. She learnt he had run out of the officers’ mess on the day of Hughes’ death and disappeared. She was pregnant but lost the baby at four months. Kay remarried, but when she died in 1983, aged 66, her will asked that her ashes be put next to her first husband’s grave.

In an interview, she spoke of meeting him in heaven. “We’ll have time together, at last,” she said.

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