Here is some info on the 12 Hurricanes the Finnish bought from England in 1940.
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Finnish government purchased 12 Hurricane fighters from Britain in early 1940. The Finnish aircraft were from the first Gloster Hurricane series of 500 aircraft. They had the Merlin III engine and a Hamilton or a Rotol propeller. On the 29th of January 1940 the Finnish pilots selected to fly the fighters to Finland met at Finnish Air Force HQ in Helsinki. The detachment leader was Lt. Jussi Räty, for which the det was to be called "Detachment Räty". The other pilots were ensigns Aarne Alitalo, Heikki Kaukovaara, Eino Mesinen, Erkki Mustonen, Paavo Myllylä, Aarne Nissinen and Tapio Taskinen, sergeants Paavo Aikala and Uuno Karhumäki, also Sgt. Martti Laitinen and Pekka Vassinen.
Lt. Räty was assigned from LeLv 26 (Air Squadron 26), which was in the process of converting to the new Gloster Gladiators. The other pilots came from the replacement regiment at Parola.
The group took a commercial Aero flight to Stockholm and proceeded to London via Copenhagen and Amsterdam. From London they proceeded to RAF base St. Athan on the 5th of February 1940.
The training squadron where the Finns were to be trained was No.11 Group Fighting School commanded by Squadron Leader Tom Pinkham. The squadron was divided into three flights: A Flight commanded by Flight Lieutenant Adye, B Flight commanded by F/L Robinson and C Flight commanded by F/L Cox.
Squadron Leader Pinkham told the Finns that he had been ordered to speed up the training and that they would fly few flights in the Link Trainers and Harwards and then 10 - 12 hrs with the Hurricanes prior to ferry flight to Finland. The British pilots were required to fly 40 hrs with the Link Trainers and 30 hrs with the Hurricanes and they normally had some 250 hrs solo time before the training. The squadron had a fully equipped Hurricane cockpit for ground training.
http://www.saunalahti.fi/~fta/hu-fin-1.htm
Monkeysee1 said:The Polish fighters who flew with the Allies in England were the most dangerous.