Edgar James Kain

Edgar James Kain — known throughout the RAF by the New Zealand nickname ‘Cobber’ — was born in Hastings, New Zealand, on 27 June 1918 and joined the Royal Air Force in 1936. Posted to No. 73 Squadron, he went to France with the squadron at the outbreak of war and flew the Hawker Hurricane through the long stalemate of the ‘Phoney War’ and then the German onslaught of May 1940. He claimed his first victory in November 1939 and his fifth in March 1940, becoming the first RAF flying ace of the Second World War and the first airman of the war to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross; by the time of his death he was credited with well over a dozen enemy aircraft and had become a household name, a press favourite at a time when Britain badly wanted heroes.

Rested at last and about to fly home, on 7 June 1940 Kain took off from the airfield at Échemines for a final farewell to the squadron. Performing low-level aerobatics over the field, he lost control during a third roll and crashed; he was thrown from the cockpit and killed, aged twenty-one. He is buried in Choloy War Cemetery in France.