Duxford 2025 Battle of Britain Air Show

Video from the channel The RodFather about Duxford Battle of Britain Air Show 2025, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 19:11. Language: English. Video type: Air show.

Recording of the Duxford Battle of Britain Air Show 2025, centred on the gathering of Hawker Hurricanes that headlined the show. The commentator introduces, one by one, the aircraft taxiing along the runway. Among them is one that arrived from the Czech Republic, another from Fighter Aviation Engineering, Hurricane Heritage's R4118, based at Duxford, and the Mk I P3717.

Eight Hurricanes taxi to the western end of the airfield and take off together. According to the commentator, no more than seven had flown together at once since the early 1950s, though he admits he cannot be certain. During the flying display, the public address system reads the first-person account of a Hurricane pilot shot down over Southampton. A Messerschmitt 110 hit his aircraft, wounding him in one eye and one foot. Even so, he pursued the German fighter with his cockpit on fire before parachuting out between 12,000 and 15,000 feet, with burns to both hands. The video closes with music over the final passes.

Almost all the aircraft shown are Mk Is with wartime service records. One fought with No. 73 Squadron in France and later in the Battle of Britain, passed to the Soviet Union and flew again in New Zealand in 2000. It now wears the colours of P3143 from the Czechoslovak squadron at Duxford, which operated there between 24 July and 16 October 1940 and shot down six aircraft. Another came down on the beach at Dunkirk on 31 May 1940 during Operation Dynamo and was rebuilt after lengthy restoration work. P3717 served with No. 253 Squadron, also passed to the Soviet Union and was later restored in the United Kingdom.