No. 73 Squadron

No. 73 Squadron entered the war as one of only two Hurricane squadrons deployed to France with the Advanced Air Striking Force in September 1939. During the “Phoney War” its pilots accumulated combat experience over the Franco-German border; Flying Officer Edgar “Cobber” Kain became the first Allied ace of the war before being killed in a low-level aerobatic accident on 7 June 1940. The squadron withdrew to England in June 1940, losing around forty ground crew when RMS Lancastria was sunk off St Nazaire. After a brief, largely ineffective stint as a night-fighter unit during the Battle of Britain, the squadron shipped its Hurricanes to Egypt via the Takoradi air route in late 1940 and spent the next two and a half years fighting across the Western Desert and Tunisia. Converting to Spitfires in mid-1943, it then served in Italy and the Balkans until the German surrender.