Hawker Hurricane IIc – PZ865, Night Reaper, BBMF 2009 1/48

Battle of Britain Flight Hurricane PZ865 was in 2009 painted to represent Hurricane IIc BE581, ‘Night Reaper’, the aircraft flown by the Czech fighter ace Flt Lt Karel Kuttelwascher DFC* during night intruder operations from Tangmere in 1942 with the RAF’s legendary No 1(F) Squadron. In only 15 night intruder missions ‘Kut’, as he was know to his colleagues, shot down 15 enemy bombers (3 in one night on 5 May 1942) over their own airfields in France; he also damaged a further five bombers and shot up several steam locomotives and ‘E’ boats. The single-seat Hurricanes were not radar equipped, so targets could only be found visually and without the benefit of modern aids to night vision. With their Hurricanes fitted with long-range drop tanks, night intruder pilots flew long sorties of 3 to 3½ hours, often in poor conditions and completely alone. ‘Kut’s aircraft, BE581 ‘JX-E’, wore the ‘Night Reaper’ motif on the starboard engine cowling and ‘Kut’ had swastika ‘kill’ symbols painted under the cockpit on the port side. When his three kills from the night of 5 May 1942 were added there were 11 swastika symbols displayed (‘Kut’ eventually achieved a total of 18 confirmed kills). The aircraft’s rudder and a panel on the port wing had to be replaced with black-painted items from a ‘Turbinlite’ Hurricane (BD770) due to ‘flak’ damage incurred by BE581 on that sortie. This is all faithfully replicated on PZ865 as a ‘snapshot in time’. ‘Kut’ survived the war but died in 1959 from a heart attack – he was only 42.