Ralph Barker

The Hurricats Ralph Barker

With the Battle of Britain won, Winston Churchill and his military chiefs now faced an even more fearsome challenge in the Battle of the Atlantic.

Thwarted in his plans to invade, Hitler decided instead that he would starve Britain into submission. Operating in conjunction with U-Boats, long-range Condor aircraft attacked allied shipping far beyond the range of any land-based fighters.

To counter the Luftwaffe threat, RAF and Fleet Air Arm volunteers to be catapulted from merchant ships in specially modified Hawker Hurricanes. With nowhere to land it was a one-way mission.

If the British fighter pilots survived combat, they had no option but to bail out or ditch in the North Atlantic and hope they would be picked up by the one of the convoy escorts.

Survival was anything but certain ...