Date:	Sunday 19 May 1940
Time:	day
Type:	Hawker Hurricane Mk 1
Owner/operator:	607 (County of Durham) Sqn RAF
Registration:	P3535
MSN:	AF-P
Fatalities:	Fatalities: 1 / Occupants: 1
Aircraft damage:	Destroyed
Location:	Oisy-le-Verger, Pas-de-Calais, 20 miles from Bachy -   France
Phase:	Combat
Nature:	Military
Departure airport:	Vitry-en-Artois, France
Destination airport:

Narrative:
Hawker Hurricane Mk.I P3535 (AF-P) 607 (County of Durham) Squadron, RAF: Written off (destroyed) when lost (failed to return from combat operations on 19 May 1940. Aircraft officially came down near Cambrai, France, and the pilot was killed. (But see notes below). According to the official Air Ministry file on the incident (File AIR 81/377): "Hurricane shot down near Cambrai, France, 19 May 1940. Acting Squadron Leader G M Fidler, missing presumed dead"

607 (County of Durham) squadron suffered heavy losses and lost two commanding officers in short space of time. As senior pilot, Flight Lieutenant John Sample was given command of the remains until the squadron was ordered to withdrawn from France on 21 May 1940. Although the Hurricane of Acting Squadron Leader Fidler, that was lost on 19 May 1940, was not officially identified, unofficial sources state that it was P3535/AF-P and that the pilot bailed out after combat with Bf 109s of LG 2.

Crew of Hurricane P3535:
Acting Squadron Leader (Pilot) George Marley Fidler, RAF 34219, age 27, killed in action 19/05/1940, buried at Bachy Communal Cemetery, France

Note, however, that officially, Squadron Leader George Marley Fidler is still "missing, presumed dead", and that status has never been updated or changed. Hence he is commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial.

According to a biography of the pilot (see link #7): "In the ensuing air battle, George Marley Fidler was shot in the head and bailed out. Unable to open his parachute, George Marley Fidler fell into a field on the outskirts of Bachy. His body was hastily buried where he fell, by a party of passing British soldiers. His Hurricane aircraft crashed some distance away.

A year or so later, George Marley Fidler’s body was exhumed from the field and placed in the village cemetery at Bachy. At the service, the priest was concerned that he did not know the religion of the deceased airman; Catholic, Protestant, or something else.

In 2006, a group of Franco-Belgian amateur historians excavated the site at Bachy where a Hurricane, believed to be George Marley Fidler's, had crashed. It turned out that this aircraft was the Hurricane of Flying Officer Strickland of 87 Squadron, who had been shot down at 10:00 hours on Sunday 19 May, six hours before Fidler's. Strickland had been able to open his parachute and survived, in spite of being shot at as he descended by French soldiers, who thought he was a German paratrooper.

This raised the question, where was George Marley Fidler’s aircraft? About the same time that the Bachy site was being excavated, pieces of another Hurricane were found at Oisy-le-Verger, Pas-de-Calais department in the Hauts-de France, some twenty miles from Bachy. Parts recovered carried the serial number of Fidler’s aircraft, and local people who saw the plane crash said that it carried a yellow star on its tail, denoting the Squadron Leader. It is difficult to be absolutely certain of the exact events at the time, but the following statements can be made:

1) Operations Record Books are a reliable source of evidence, but the original 607 Squadron ORBs were destroyed when they left France on 21-22 May. Patchy records were months written later, in England, and there may be confusion over aircraft serial numbers.
2) The pilot buried at Bachy must be George Marley Fidler. He must have carried sufficient identification for the soldiers and villagers to know his name and record it on the grave.
3) It is virtually impossible for an unmanned Hurricane to continue in the air for twenty miles after its pilot had baled out.
4) There is another Hurricane crash site not far from Bachy, in a former anti-tank ditch. This site has never been excavated.

1. Royal Air Force Aircraft P1000-P9999 (James J Halley, Air Britain, 1978 p 21)
2. Fighter Command Losses of the Second World War Vol.1 Norman L R Franks p 28
3. Twelve days in May, the air battle for Northern France and the Low Countries, Brian Cull, Bruce Lander and Heinrich Weiss, Grub Street, 1999
4. National Archives (PRO Kew) File AIR 81/377: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C14502264
5. https://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/2276099/fidler,-george-marley/
6. http://www.rafcommands.com/forum/showthread.php?7876-AB-Serials-Hurricane-P3533/page2
7. http://www.epibreren.com/ww2/raf/607_squadron.html#1905
8. Biography of Pilot: http://greatayton.wdfiles.com/local--files/world-war-2/WW2-Fidler.pdf
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachy
10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oisy-le-Verger ....

Other occurrences involving this aircraft

13 May 1940

P2620

607 (County of Durham) Sqn RAF

1

near Landen, Leuven, Flemish Brabant

w/o

BACHY 2019

Date/time	Contributor	Updates
15-Jul-2019 15:57	Dr. John Smith	Added
15-Jul-2019 15:58	Dr. John Smith	Updated [Source, Narrative]
17-Jul-2019 13:39	stehlik49	Updated [Operator]
24-Jul-2019 16:14	Dr. John Smith	Updated [Time, Source, Narrative]
24-Jul-2019 16:18	Dr. John Smith	Updated [Source, Narrative]
24-Jul-2019 16:19	Dr. John Smith	Updated [Source, Narrative]
09-Jun-2020 17:34	Van den Broucke	Updated [Photo]
10-Jun-2020 06:47	Van den Broucke	Updated [Photo]