{"id":171643,"date":"2025-09-27T01:18:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T01:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/171643\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T01:18:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T01:18:11","slug":"today-in-history-september-27-incredibly-lucky-landing-spot-saves-pilot-shot-in-mid-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/171643\/","title":{"rendered":"Today in History &#8211; September 27: Incredibly lucky landing spot saves pilot shot in mid-air"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An English pilot survived being shot through the stomach in midair only thanks to a fortunate landing spot on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.9news.com.au\/today-in-history\" target=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"September 27, 1940\">September 27, 1940<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>At the height of the Battle of Britain, Victor Ekins was behind the controls of a Hurricane V6672 fighter over the south of England.<\/p>\n<p>In a dogfight with a German Me-110, his plane was gunned down.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/https:\/\/prod.static9.net.au\/fs\/45dba368-ff15-4910-98a6-44a002ebbc8a.jpeg\"   alt=\"\"\/>An English pilot survived being shot through the stomach in midair only thanks to a fortunate landing spot on September 27, 1940. (Imperial War Museums)<\/p>\n<p>A bullet passed through Ekins&#8217; back, out his stomach and into his Hurricane&#8217;s controls, rendering the plane inoperable.<\/p>\n<p>At this moment he was 5700m above the ground.<\/p>\n<p>But despite an unresponsive plane and a critical injury, Ekins was able to jump out and parachute down to the ground.<\/p>\n<p>Landing in the English countryside with no way of calling for help may well have been a death sentence for a seriously wounded pilot.<\/p>\n<p>But by pure chance, Ekins landed in just about the most fortuitous place &#8211; the base camp for a Canadian military ambulance unit.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/https:\/\/prod.static9.net.au\/fs\/6720335d-04e5-4767-b076-e9e968bdba24.jpeg\"   alt=\"\"\/>An English pilot survived being shot through the stomach in midair only thanks to a fortunate landing spot on September 27, 1940. (Supplied)<\/p>\n<p>They were able to treat him and rush him to a nearby hospital.<\/p>\n<p>Ekins returned to his squadron just two months later.<\/p>\n<p>He survived the war and was released from the RAF as a squadron leader.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He then returned to his family business as a farm surveyor.<\/p>\n<p>More than 1500 RAF aircrew died during the Battle of Britain, including 24 Australians.<\/p>\n<p>The Luftwaffe lost an estimated 2585 aircrew during the battle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An English pilot survived being shot through the stomach in midair only thanks to a fortunate landing spot&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-171643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}