WW2 Hurricane fighter will fly to Finland after restoration

Philip Lawton is restoring a wartime Hurricane in Finnish Air Force livery

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By Anssi Miettinen in Thruxton, Hampshire
     
      "What I thought I’d do is fly a couple of circuits over Helsinki and then land at Malmi Airport", says Philip Lawton.
      There is nothing particularly out of the ordinary in the Englishman’s remarks - there are plenty of middle-aged men out there with pilot’s licences and cockpit dreams.
      But Lawton’s dream is of a rather more ambitious nature than most, and right now it is lying in bits in an aircraft hangar in Hampshire.
     
A World War II Hawker Hurricane is looking forward to taking wing once more in the colours of the Finnish Air Force.
      All that is required for the transformation is the work of six mechanics over two years, a lot of missing spare parts, and around EUR 1.5 million in costs.
      There are at present no airworthy Hurricanes left in Finland, though there is one museum specimen.
     
You have to ask the question: why would an apparently sane Englishman want to invest such a large amount of money on behalf of Finnish aviation history?
      Naturally it is a labour of love.
      "As a little kid I used to put together scale model aeroplanes. I started flying fifteen years ago."
      The other love affair is a Finnish one. In fact Lawton, his wife Jaana, and their children will be moving to Finland soon. Permanently. They have already bought a house in Espoo.
     
The restoration project on the Hurricane fighter began three years ago, when Lawton sold his engineering business and took retirement.
      He had extra time on his hands - and a fair bit of extra money, too.
      In England, the restoration of old military aircraft - "the warbird scene" - is a popular hobby.
      "In the summer months there can be two or three flying show displays every weekend", says Lawton, and he promises that when it is completed he will fly his own 65-year-old aircraft at shows in Finland.
     
The work to reconstruct the Hawker Hurricane begins from scratch, with all the parts separated and carefully catalogued. According to Lawton there are “around a million of them”. Each component is cleaned and screened for signs of metal fatigue.
      Once that process is done, then begins the exercise of building the plane from the ground up with the aid of manuals.
      The construction work and the condition of the individual parts is monitored closely by the Civil Aviation Authority’s Safety Regulation Group, which keeps a database register of civil aircraft in the UK.
     
"Look at that! The quality of this steel is quite fantastic", says Lawton as he shows off a piece of metal about the size of his fist.
      It gleams like new, even though it is approaching seventy years of age and has spent much of its life who knows where.
      Lawton is painstakingly building his Hurricane from two written-off “corpses”.
      One was bought from England and the other hails from Canada, where the aircraft was designated the Hurricane XII. He is also putting together the additional components he needs by swapping items with other Hurricane enthusiasts.
     
"There were six Hurricanes left in Finland after the war. One of them is in the Aviation Museum in Tikkakoski, but what became of the other five is not known. It would be wonderful if someone could shed some light on their later history. I’d really like to have some parts from Finnish Hurricanes in my aircraft", says Lawton.
     
Flying vintage aircraft is not without its dangers.
      "As a matter of fact accidents do happen quite often. Last September one Hurricane came down during an airshow display and the pilot was killed."
      Flying to Finland in a plane such as this is also a time-consuming business.
      In order to fly to Malmi from the UK, one needs to book a couple of days and be prepared to make a substantial detour across Central Europe.
      This last may cause problems of its own.
      When flown by the Finns in the Continuation War of 1941-44, the Hurricanes were painted with the blue swastika roundel [introduced some years before Nazi Germany commandeered the symbol, just in case anyone wonders] that was the insignia of the Finnish Air Force.
      “I guess I’ll have to cover them up somehow for the duration of the flight”, says Lawton.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 25.2.2008

More on this subject:
 FACTFILE: Finland bought a dozen Hurricanes, and grabbed three more

Previously in HS International Edition:
  Who found the Brewster anyway? (9.1.2007 - the convoluted story of another restoration project)

Links:
  A Hurricane restoration website
  Warbird Alley
  Finnish Air Force: Continuation War, 1941-44 (Wikipedia)
  Hawker Hurricane (Wikipedia)

ANSSI MIETTINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
anssi.miettinen@hs.fi