The RAF Pilot Buried Twice

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]Scenes like this are always deeply moving. Modern servicemen standing in silence as one of their own, lost in battle more than 80 years ago, is finally laid to rest. In 2022, workers in a French canal uncovered the wreckage of a Hawker Hurricane. Inside were the remains of the Royal Air Force pilot who had vanished during the desperate fighting of May 1940. At first glance, the story seems tragically simple. A fighter pilot shot down during the Battle of France, his aircraft buried for decades beneath the soil.

[00:00:31]But the deeper you look into the story of Squadron Leader George Morley Fidler, the stranger it becomes. Because officially, George Fidler had already been buried in a war grave for nearly 60-odd years.

[00:00:44]And stranger still, there's a very real argument they should never been flying that Hurricane at all.

[00:00:52]As so often happens with these small personal stories from the Second World War, the closer you look, the more extraordinary they become.

[00:01:01]So, who exactly was George Fidler?

[00:01:03]George Morley Fidler was born in Great Ayton, Yorkshire, and joined the Royal Air Force in 1934. After training in Egypt on the aging Avro 504K, he earned solid reports as a capable and intelligent young officer, particularly in technical and ground subjects. Over the next several years, he served across Egypt, India, and Iraq with number 45 Squadron, flying reconnaissance and bombing duties across Britain's Middle Eastern commands.

[00:01:34]This was not glamorous fighter work.

[00:01:36]Fidler's world was one of long flights over desert terrain, navigation exercises, reconnaissance patrols, and bombing practice.

[00:01:45]He flew aircraft like the Fairey III F, the Vickers Vincent, and later the Vickers Wellesley. All slow, steady bomber and general purpose aircraft. By 1939, he was an experienced RAF officer, but he was not a fighter pilot.

[00:02:03]When war broke out in September 1939, Fidler, now Flight Lieutenant, was sent to France as an armaments officer attached to number 60 Wing.

[00:02:12]Much of his work appears to have been administrative, sometimes involving flights behind the lines in Tiger Moths carrying dispatches and conducting liaison duties.

[00:02:22]Then, in January 1940, he became attached to number 607 Squadron.

[00:02:28]At the time, number 607 was flying Gloster Gladiators from airfields in northern France.

[00:02:34]Here, for the first time, Fidler began gaining operational fighter experience.

[00:02:39]And experience may be putting it generously.

[00:02:43]Between January and May 1940, Fidler flew only a handful of operational patrols in the Gladiator. Records suggest that by the spring of 1940, he had accumulated roughly 10 hours on the type.

[00:02:56]Then came the Hurricane.

[00:02:58]According to surviving squadron records and the diary of fellow pilot Francis Blackadder, George Fidler's first Hurricane flight took place on the 3rd of March, 1940, a 30-minute type experience flight.

[00:03:11]A second Hurricane flight followed later that month.

[00:03:14]And that was essentially it.

[00:03:16]At the time of his death, Fidler likely had fewer than 15 hours in fighter aircraft altogether, and perhaps as little as 3 hours in the Hawker Hurricane itself.

[00:03:27]Yet, only weeks later, he would find himself commanding a frontline fighter squadron during one of the darkest moments in British military history.

[00:03:36]Why?

[00:03:37]Simple.

[00:03:39]He was there.

[00:03:40]The German offensive launched on the 10th of May, 1940, shattered Allied positions across Belgium and France.

[00:03:46]RAF fighter squadrons suffered severe casualties trying to slow the advance.

[00:03:51]Number 607 Squadron was no exception.

[00:03:54]Within days, aircraft had been destroyed, pilots killed, and senior officers lost or wounded. Flight Lieutenant John Sample, B Flight CEO, had been shot down and badly injured on the 10th of May. 3 days later, the squadron commander, Squadron Leader Lance E. Smith, disappeared during operations over Dinant and was posted missing.

[00:04:14]Suddenly, in the chaos of collapse and retreat, George Fidler found himself promoted to Squadron Leader and placed in command of number 607 Squadron on the 17th of May.

[00:04:25]A capable RAF officer, certainly.

[00:04:28]But one whose background lay in slow biplane bombers rather than high-performance monoplane fighters.

[00:04:36]2 days later, he was dead.

[00:04:39]On the afternoon of the 19th of May, 1940, Fidler took off from Seclin Airfield in Hurricane P3535 as part of an offensive patrol to Dinant, Belgium, alongside aircraft from number 17 Squadron.

[00:04:53]He never returned.

[00:04:55]Sergeant Rolls of number 607 Squadron later reported seeing a Hurricane attacked by a Messerschmitt 109 south of Cambrai. The RAF fighter went down and Rolls claimed the German aircraft is destroyed shortly afterward.

[00:05:10]No other Hurricanes from 17 or 607 Squadron were lost in the area that day.

[00:05:16]The aircraft had almost certainly been George Fidler's.

[00:05:21]For decades afterwards, the story appeared settled. Post-war investigators believed Fidler's remains had already been recovered and buried in Basseux Communal Cemetery.

[00:05:33]Four RAF pilots had been lost near the reported crash area, and investigators concluded that the unidentified remains most likely belonged to Fidler.

[00:05:43]Case closed.

[00:05:44]Or so everyone thought.

[00:05:47]Then, in 2005, metal detectors detectorists working near Aussie La Vergier, more than 20 mi south of the uh supposed crash site, discovered wreckage from Hurricane P3535.

[00:06:03]The location was strikingly close to where Sergeant Rose had originally claimed to have seen Fiddler shot down.

[00:06:10]A researcher based in France raised the discrepancy with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and formal investigation began. Although Fiddler's family had long believed his body recovered after the war, no direct descendants remained alive for DNA comparison. Instead, relatives from pilots connected to the original grave were tested. None matched the remains.

[00:06:32]Combined with the recovered aircraft wreckage, the evidence increasingly pointed towards one conclusion.

[00:06:39]The body discovered in the Hurricane was almost certainly George Morley Fiddler.

[00:06:44]For more than 80 years, he had remained where he fell, still inside his aircraft beneath the fields of France.

[00:06:53]In 2026, Squadron Leader George Morley Fiddler was finally laid to rest with full military honors at the London Cemetery and Extension at Longueval.

[00:07:03]His headstone bears the inscription chosen by his mother all those years ago.

[00:07:09]So, he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.

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