British fighter aircraft from the Second World War discovered in Ukraine

Some of the remains of the Hurricanes found buried in a forest near Kyiv. Photograph: National Aviation Museum

The wreckage of eight British Hurricane fighter planes from the Second World War has been found by Ukrainian authorities.

The planes were transferred to the Soviet Union by Britain when Nazi Germany invaded the country in 1941; they were discovered next an unexploded bomb from the same fight in a forest south of Kiev.

According to Oleks Shtan, a former airline pilot who is in charge of the excavation, "It is very unusual to find this aircraft in Ukraine." The discovery of a lend-lease aircraft here is significant for our aviation history because none had before been discovered.

The Hurricane was a powerful, simple-to-fly machine, according to Shtan. It was appropriate for new pilots and stable enough to be used as a gun platform. a trustworthy aircraft.

The most valuable parts of the rusting wreckage, such as the radios and machine guns, had been removed before it was taken to the forest.

The Hurricanes, which downed more than half of all German aircraft during the Battle of Britain, were supplied to the USSR as part of a shipment of roughly 3,000 fighter aircraft.

RAF Hurricanes in northern Russia during the second world war. Photograph: Sovfoto/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Historians assert that some of these aircraft were purposefully disassembled and buried after the war in order to prevent the Soviet Union from having to repay the US since, in accordance with the lend-lease agreement, Moscow was obligated to pay for any supplied military equipment that was still in working order.

The Hurricanes will be assembled again and displayed at Ukraine's National Aviation Museum.

According to Valerii Romanenko, the museum's head of research, "The Hurricanes are a symbol of British assistance during the years of the Second World War, just as we are very appreciative of British assistance today." "The UK is currently one of the biggest suppliers of military hardware to our nation."

According to footage posted online, skeleton-filled mudflats were discovered in mid-June as a result of the massive reservoir along the Dnipro River being drained when the Kakhovka dam was destroyed.

Some of the remains, according to historians, may belong to persons who perished in a significant battle that took place 80 years ago on the same ground as the core of Ukraine's counteroffensive against Russian domination, near Nikopol and Kamianka-Dniprovska.

One of the largest military operations of the Second World War, the Soviet army's counterattack against the German army, focused on the fight of the Dnipro, or Dnieper in Russian, and involved more than 6 million soldiers.