LONDON (AP) – The last surviving pilot of the Battle of Britain has died, severing the last living link to the few thousand young men who fought the Nazi air force to a standstill amid fears that Britain might be forced to capitulate during the early months of World War II.
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…
