page_title: Ray Holmes
section_title: Battle of Britain
hierarchical_section_title: Ray Holmes / Second World War / Battle of Britain
context_page_description: Raymond Towers "Ray" Holmes was a British Royal Air Force fighter pilot during the Second World War who is best known for his notable act of bravery, while taking part in the Battle of Britain. On 15 September 1940, Holmes saved Buckingham Palace from being hit by German bombing, when he used his Hawker Hurricane to destroy a Dornier Do 17 bomber over London by ramming. He was feted by the press as a war hero for his saving of Buckingham Palace. The British pilot became a King's Messenger after the war, and died at the age of 90 in 2005.
context_section_description: In June 1940 he joined No. 504 Squadron RAF. He became known among his flight comrades as “Arty” which was taken from the initials of his name R.T.
  On 15 September 1940, known as Battle of Britain Day, Sergeant Holmes was flying a Hawker Hurricane fighter when he spotted a formation of three Dornier Do 17 bombers of Kampfgeschwader 76 heading for central London, to make a bombing attempt. As he made an attack on one of the bombers, the bomber fired a flamethrower at him, and Holmes' windscreen was covered in oil.
  The flamethrower, obviously intended for use on the ground, was not working properly at 16,000 feet, giving a jet of flame only some 100 yards long. The oil had not caught fire, and it was this that had found its way onto the Hurricane. Knowing that the airflow would clear the oil away, Ray Holmes waited for his view to be restored. As his windscreen cleared Ray realised that he was dangerously close to the Dornier, and ramming the stick forward, passed beneath the bomber.
  I made my attack on this bomber and he spurted out a lot of oil, just a great stream over my aeroplane. blotting out my windscreen. I couldn't see a damn thing. Then, as the windscreen cleared, I suddenly found myself going straight into his tail. So I stuck my stick forward and went under him, practically grazing my head on his belly.
  He attacked the second Dornier, causing a crew member to bail out.
  I got to the stern of the aeroplane and was shooting at him when suddenly something white came out of the aircraft. I thought that a part of his wing had come away but in actual fact it turned out to be a man with a parachute coming out. I was travelling at 250 miles per hour, it all happened so quickly, but before I knew what had happened this bloody parachute was draped over my starboard wing. There was this poor devil on his parachute hanging straight out behind me, and my aeroplane was being dragged. All I could do was to swing the aeroplane left and then right to try to get rid of this man. Fortunately, his parachute slid off my wing and down he went, and I thought, Thank heavens for that!
  Holmes then spotted the third Dornier still heading onwards, making directly for Buckingham Palace. Avoiding the bomber's machine gunfire, Holmes quickly climbed ahead of it, then swung around to make a head-on attack on the Dornier. However upon firing discovered his machine guns failed. Holmes decided to ram the bomber hoping his plane could withstand the impact and cut through it. He flew his plane into the top-side of the German bomber, cutting off the rear tail section with his wing.
  As I fired, my ammunition gave out. I thought, Hell, he's got away now. And there he was coming along and his tail looked very fragile and very inviting. So I thought I'd just take off the tip of his tail. So I went straight at it along him and hit his port fin with my port wing. I thought, That will just take his fin off and he'll never get home without the tail fin. I didn't allow for the fact that the tail fin was actually part of the main fuselage. Although I didn't know it at the time, I found out later that I had knocked off the whole back half of the aircraft including the twin tails.
  On the ground, the event was captured on film, and witnessed by a large group of people in nearby Hyde Park. Jimmy Earley was playing football at the corner of Ebury Bridge Road, near Victoria station. The air-raid siren had gone off, but as usual he and his friends ignored it. Suddenly they heard gunfire. Earley recalled, "We ran up to the Ebury Bridge and I can remember the Hurricane seemed to go underneath the Dornier, which split and all of sudden - wallop! - it came down in no time. Obviously the Hurricane pilot had no care for his own safety, he couldn't have done. He just hit it and the back of it came off." 
  Holmes' own plane began to dive to the left, and was no longer responding to the controls. As the Hurricane went into a vertical dive, Holmes bailed out. As he climbed out, the air-stream caught him and smacked him down on to the roof of the Hurricane. Then, as he was thro
caption: Rudolf Heitsch's Dornier Do 17 in Castle Farm Shoreham. The flame throwing device is just visible on the aft fuselage.[7] The device had not been tested at high altitude and when used, squirted black oil over Holmes' windshield and attracted the attention of British fighters. The Do 17 was shot down by John Dundas and his wingman.
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