P-40 found in Egypt last month was Flown by RCAF pilot

[Mister Fork]

Complete write up here.

http://www.vintagewings.ca/Home/tabid/40/language/en-CA/Default.aspx

[ariansworld]

Do you have a link to the actual article?

[Rino]

     Try this:

http://www.vintagewings.ca/VintageNews/Stories/tabid/116/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/365/language/en-CA/Hero.aspx

[MiloMorai]

So it has been confirmed that the a/c found was Copping's? There was speculation that it was.

[Mister Fork]

They have. The society checked the archived logs at CFB Winnipeg an it was indeed him.

Still an amazing story!  Sorry bout link - must of copied wrong one. Thanks Rino for posting the right one.

[MarineUS]

Every time I look upon the now famous images of amateur photographer Jakub Perka, I do not see a remarkably intact P-40 like everyone else. I don't see a potentially valuable warbird for restoration or display in a museum. I hardly see the airplane at all. What is see is the ghost of Dennis Copping, its unfortunate and brave young pilot.

I can just imagine his mounting stress and fear as his fuel gauges dropped inexorably towards empty, while he circled trying to find a fix on something, or while he droned steadily along a course he could not know was taking him farther into trouble. I feel his momentary elation as he gets the Kittyhawk back on the ground without killing himself. I see the smoking ruin of his beautiful fighter. I hear the ticking of its cooling engine, the dripping of glycol, feel the invasion of blast furnace heat as he slides back the canopy and steps out onto the wing. I smell the hot oil now bleeding from its once mighty Allison heart, staining the desert floor. I see him standing there, beside his aircraft, perhaps dazed, when his forehead hit his instrument panel, and not yet fully understanding the trouble he now faced. I see him unhook his parachute and toss it onto the sand behind the port wing. Was he happy to be down or was he panicked after destroying his Kittyhawk charge?

I see him in my imagination walking around the wrecked fighter, assessing the damage, perhaps touching the twisted mess that was his propeller, wondering what to do, talking to himself. The elation of living through the crash must have quickly given way to increasing terror. He was alone, and it had been an hour of flying since he last saw signs of human activity slide past his wing. It was hot, terribly hot – June in the Sahara desert on the Tropic of Cancer hot. My guess is he walked to the higher ground nearby to scan the emptiness. The realization and the terror of his situation must have started settling in. A man could not be more alone than this and still be on the planet Earth.

In one of Perka's photos, I see the D-ring of his parachute release on the port side, half buried in sand, and I know that his worried hand was the last to touch it as he deployed his chute to make a shelter from the searing, brutal sun. I see that the battery and a broken radio were removed from the fuselage compartment behind the cockpit, and I know he was fiddling with them to get the radio to work. There is evidence of possible ground fire damage on the top side of the rear fuselage. If this is ground fire, there is a good chance that this hit also damaged the radio which is secured in the compartment directly beneath the exit holes. Pilots who took off with Copping indicate they were shot at and that they were unable to raise Copping, who was clearly heading in the wrong direction.

I see the remnants of his white parachute in the lee and shade of the broken Allison, and I know that he sat beneath it, perhaps for a long time trying to decide what to do. It is clear that at one point, suffering from terrible thirst and despairing of his squadron ever finding him, he made the decision to walk out, hoping that, of the 360 course choices he could make, he had somehow chosen the right one that would bring him to water or even salvation. What he also probably knew, even then, was that no matter what he did, he had no chance of survival.

If I could speak to Dennis Copping, I would tell him “Rest now Sergeant, we have found you. It took seventy years, but now the world knows. Now your family knows. Vintage Wings of Canada will carry your name on our Kittyhawk HS-B and we will tell Canadians and the world of the great courage it took to be a fighter pilot in the desert and take a fighter across hundreds of miles of forbidding danger to a repair depot. We will tell them of your ordeal and suffering. We will tell your story Sergeant. Rest now”

Dave O'Malley


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Did a good job bringing the story to life.....I can only imagine the fear of being in the desert, alone and with no way to know where you're headed......