An RAF pilot shot down during the Second World War has been discovered by engineers building a canal in northern France.
Squadron Leader George Morley Fidler, 27, was shot down by a German Messerschmitt on May 19, 1940, as he tried to protect British troops retreating to Dunkirk.
His Hurricane, part of 607 Squadron, was one of 12 downed that day.
Fidler had been lost for 80 years despite what was believed to be his body being given a grave by soldiers who found a Hurricane’s wreckage and assumed it was his.
In 2006 a group of amateur historians excavated the crash site and found the plane had been flown by a different officer.
Almost 20 years later, French engineers working on a canal at Oisy-le-Verger in the Pas de Calais found Fidler’s Hurricane, with its pilot sitting upright in the cockpit.
It was impossible to test for DNA – Fidler had no children and nor did his two siblings – so the airman, from Great Ayton in North Yorkshire, was identified after samples from three other pilots who crashed that day ruled them out.
He will be laid to rest next month on the 86th anniversary of the day his Hurricane crashed.
Squadron Leader George Fidler was discovered 86 years after crashing his Hurricane in France
The RAF were fighting in France at the time in an attempt to resist the German effort overwhelming the country
The body believed to be Fidler’s was buried twice after his death in 1940 during the Battle of France
But in 2006 French engineers excavating the site where the Hurricane believed to be Fidler’s had crashed proved it was not in fact his
The airman will be laid to rest at a ceremony next month, almost nine decades after his death
Fidler was described as an ‘exceptional’ pilot and had been patrolling the skies as the Germans advanced across France, Belgium and the Netherlands.
After his death a Hurricane was found which was assumed to be his – the body was given a hurried grave by soldiers and later re-interred in a cemetery in Bachy, a French village.
It was not until 2006 that the aircraft was proven to belong not to Fidler, but to James Strickland of 67 Squadron.
Strickland baled out and returned home before being killed in August 1941 as his Spitfire crashed in Portreath, Cornwall.
The body found in the downed aircraft now has the inscription ‘unknown airman’ on its grave – it may belong to one of two flight sergeants shot down that day but the Ministry of Defence does not allow exhuming graves for identification reasons.
It is believed the downed Hurricane pilot was either wearing kit which belonged to Fidler or had his parachute, which led the soldiers to mark his grave with his name.
Some 20 further years passed before Fidler’s body was finally found by the French engineers.
Nicola Nash, who led the war detectives team, said: ‘We are 100 per cent certain it is Morley. It has brought him to life for us … undedicating the grave where we thought he had been buried was really sad [but now] I have made contact with a cousin twice removed. He didn’t know anything about the Fidler side of the family and was amazed.’
Fidler had worked for his father’s building business and joined the RAF in 1934 aged 21.
After being posted to Egypt for three years, he was promoted to acting flight lieutenant in 1938 and posted to France the following year as part of the British Expeditionary Force.
