Nationality: British

Serial number: R4106

Unit: 32 Squadron

Call sign: Not known

Date of loss: 18/08/1940

At 5.29pm, Sergeant Leonard Pearce's Hurricane was shot down during a dogfight with Me 109s over Canterbury. He baled out, slightly wounded, with his aircraft crashing at Rose Garden Cottage, Chartham Hatch.
Sergeant Pearce had joined the RAFVR in August, 1938 and was called up on the 1st September, 1939. He survived the Battle of Britain despite being shot down for a second time on the 13th October, 1940. However, he was not to survive the war. On the 9th April 1941, while on operations with 46 Squadron, he was killed when his aircraft stalled and crashed when coming in to land at Sherburn-in-Elmet.

The crash site was the subject of a major excavation by the London Air Museum in 1979. The brass propeller bearing exhibited here was one of the items recovered.