When Grace Egan opened her door to a Post Office telegram boy on September 18, 1940, she knew it might be dangerous news about her son, Sergeant Pilot Edward “Eddie” Egan. And she knew it might say “Regret to inform you…”

The earlier day, attending a movie matinée together with her daughter, she went deathly pale, gripped her daughter’s hand, glanced on the time, and whispered: “Eddie’s dead. We’ll never see him again.” The time of Grace’s dramatic utterance was 3.40pm.

That very same second, Sergeant Pilot Tony Pickering watched his buddy die.

Separated from the opposite Hurricanes of 501 Squadron over Kent following an assault by Luftwaffe Messerschmitts, the 2
sergeants discovered themselves alone after their formation broke up amid the melee.

Pickering gave a “thumbs-up” to his chum flying alongside however seen what he took to be three Spitfires flying behind.

Almost instantly, snaking trails of tracer whistled previous them, Egan’s Hurricane erupted in flames, rolled on its again, and plummeted down by means of scattered cloud.

Shaken, Pickering reefed spherical in tight turns, desperately trying to find the attackers. But they had been gone. Having picked off their unwitting sufferer, the Luftwaffe fighters had been streaking dwelling for France.

Collecting his senses, Pickering noticed the black bannering smoke path behind Egan’s plane because it hurtled for the bottom 13,000 ft under. At the tip of the smoke path, a vibrant crimson glow: Eddie’s Hurricane.

Then, a burst of flame because the plane impacted in woodland. There was no parachute. Circling, and preserving a cautious eye for extra Messerschmitts, Pickering pulled out his map, pinpointed the place of the crash, and flew again to RAF Kenley.

Here, he defined the place Egan had gone down, pulled out an even bigger map and pinpointed it precisely. It was a spot referred to as Daniel’s Wood at Bethersden.

And that was it, he heard no extra about his pal – that’s, not till 1976.

Despite the exact info offered by Pickering, nothing was formally finished to seek out Eddie or his plane. In any occasion, the pressure of affect had pushed Hurricane and pilot deep underground.

For the household – regardless of Grace understanding in her coronary heart – no proof of demise ever got here. For official functions, demise was described as “presumed” and Sergeant Pilot Edward James Egan grew to become one of many 537 RAF pilots and aircrew of Churchill’s revered “Few” misplaced in motion.

Of these, precisely one third had been posted as lacking with no identified grave – in complete, 179 RAF fliers. Among them, Eddie Egan.

But how may that be when the Battle of Britain was fought over dwelling territory? There are a number of explanations.

First, many went into the seas round our shoreline at a time when Britain’s air-sea
rescue provision was woeful.

Only later did rescue companies evolve, however ditched fliers in 1940 needed to depend on RNLI lifeboats, fishing boats, and even civilians in rowing boats to rescue them.

And that was provided that they had been seen.

The Air Ministry had issued aircrew with life jackets that had been the identical color because the English Channel. Realising the issue, pilots took to portray their lifejackets vibrant yellow. The penny lastly dropped in 1941, and the Air Ministry began to make them in yellow. But this was too late for greater than 100 of the Few.

Of these, many had been later washed ashore round Britain or alongside northern European coasts. Often unidentifiable, they had been merely buried as unknown RAF airmen, their epitaph: “Known unto God”.

All of them, nevertheless, are commemorated on the magnificent Commonwealth War Graves Commission Royal Air Forces Memorial at Runnymede.

Here, 20,265 lacking RAF personnel who had been misplaced over northwest Europe between 1939 and 1945 had been named. Among them, Eddie Egan and 178 different Battle of Britain fliers. Looking out from the memorial’s rooftop terrace, one can see the Home Counties the place most of those 179 males died. Poignantly, in some situations, it’s the place they nonetheless lie.

That greater than 20,000 names are recorded at Runnymede is staggering.

Even extra astonishing is that on the conflict’s finish the determine stood at greater than 40,000. It was diminished by the sterling work of RAF Missing Research & Enquiry (MREU) groups scouring Europe for crash websites, exhuming our bodies, and figuring out and marking graves of these beforehand buried as unknown.

By 1953, their work was finished. That identical yr, the Queen unveiled the memorial commemorating these unaccounted for – a line now drawn beneath the destiny of these RAF personnel nonetheless lacking. There was an issue, nevertheless: the MREU groups hadn’t included the UK of their searches.

By the early Nineteen Seventies, unregulated fans and museum teams started excavating crash websites of wartime plane.

It wasn’t lengthy earlier than a number of the Battle of Britain’s “missing” turned up.

First to be discovered was Pilot Officer George Drake, a South African, found in 1972. This was adopted by others – amongst them, Flight Lieutenant Hugh Beresford, Flying Officer Gruszka (a Pole), Sergeant John Brimble, Sergeant John “Hugh” Ellis, and a handful of others. All had been subsequently buried with full army honours.

There had been some, too, like Flight Lieutenant “Rusty” Rushmer, who had been initially buried as “unknown”, however the place the identical fans offered proof permitting graves to be marked with named headstones. In different situations, and earlier than DNA testing grew to become a game-changer, some stays had been discovered however couldn’t be recognized – together with Sergeant Hubert Adair and a Canadian, Pilot Officer John “Jack” Benzie.

In one other case, it emerged RAF information existed all alongside exhibiting precisely the place Sergeant Pilot Ernest Scott lay in his crashed Spitfire close to Sittingbourne, Kent. This, regardless of continued impassioned pleas by his grieving mom to know the place he was. In November 1990, by then conscious of the place her brother lay, Rene Hukin wrote to Prince Charles imploring him to intervene. And the long run King did. By December, “Scotty” had been recovered by the RAF.

Inevitably, the crash web site of Eddie Egan’s Hurricane ultimately grew to become the main target of an novice dig and, in 1976, human stays had been recovered from the deeply-buried, badly charred wreckage.

Such had been the ferocity of fireplace and affect that no proof to establish plane or pilot could possibly be discovered; that’s, aside from a pair of silver manicure scissors. At an inquest in 1977, HM Coroner Dr Mary McHugh formally declared the stays these of Egan, glad as to identification by means of the scissors which had been remembered as Eddie’s by his sister, Grace Summerville. There was different compelling proof, too.

Contemporary ARP stories mounted the crash at that location as 3.40pm on September 17, 1940. And no different Hurricane pilots had been lacking that day.

Not solely that, however it was precisely the place Tony Pickering had marked his map in 1940. It might need appeared like case closed.

But not fairly. In a bizarrely merciless twist, the Ministry of Defence rejected the coroner’s findings and refused to permit the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) to bury the stays beneath Eddie’s title, citing lack of formal identification. Thus, he was buried with full army honours beneath a gravestone to an unknown airman.

It was virtually as if the MoD was perpetuating an earlier obvious unwillingness to correctly examine the disappearance of these misplaced within the Battle of Britain. At his graveside stood relations and Tony Pickering although the officiating padre was unable to recite Eddie’s title.

But, like Grace Egan, who had now gone to her personal grave, they simply knew.

Such an unsatisfactory state of affairs didn’t sit effectively with the novice restoration groups, nevertheless, and in 1978 they returned to the positioning and searched additional. Against all the percentages they discovered a brass tag, no bigger than a postage stamp, on which was stamped P3820.

It had been missed in 1976 however was the variety of the Hurricane through which Eddie had been misplaced. Faced with proof, the MoD relented and instructed the CWGC to exchange the gravestone with one marked: Sergeant E J Egan, 742787, 17 September 1940, Aged 19.

Beneath, changing “Known unto God”, was inscribed: “In treasured memory of a much loved one of the Few.”

The case of Eddie Egan was amongst these of many different lacking pilots of the Battle of Britain whose tales I researched for my e-book, Finding The Few.

Today, a number of the nation’s misplaced Battle of Britain airmen nonetheless lie unburied at places throughout southern England.

With no official authorities company proactively recovering lacking British and Commonwealth service personnel, they’re prone to stay the place they fell until by chance found. If that happens, the MOD’s devoted workforce of investigators – dubbed “The War Detectives” – would step in to assist identification, contact households, and organise funerals.

Their remit, nevertheless, is proscribed by the Government to a purely reactive position – albeit a useful one.

The MoD’s stance, although, stands in stark distinction to the United States DPAA (Defense Prisoner-of-War Missing in Action Accounting Agency) groups who proceed to scour the world for American lacking of all wars. Only lately, the DPAA recovered, recognized, and returned for burial two crew members of an American B-24 bomber misplaced in a Sussex subject throughout 1944.

That will not be too removed from locations lacking RAF males nonetheless lie. The US workforce’s ethos is easy: “You may die on the battlefield, but you will not be left on the battlefield.” Sadly, a number of the RAF’s most interesting younger fliers, males who died on battlefields in Britain, lie there to this present day.

• Finding The Few by Andy Saunders (Grub Street, £20) is out now. Visit expressbookshop.com or name 020 3176 3832. Free UK P&P on orders over £25