The Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawk found in the Egyptian Sahara seventy years after its pilot walked away and vanished

In 2012, a Polish oil exploration worker named Jakub Perka discovered a nearly intact Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawk sitting on the hardpan of the Egyptian Western Desert, roughly 200 miles south of any known wartime airfield. The fighter, serial number ET574, had been missing since June 28, 1942, when Flight Sergeant Dennis Copping, a 24-year-old RAF pilot from Southend-on-Sea, England, belly-landed it in the sand and walked away into the Sahara. His remains have never been found.

How Did a P-40 End Up Alone in the Egyptian Desert?

On June 28, 1942, North Africa was deep in the desert war. Rommel’s Afrika Korps was pushing east toward Egypt, and the RAF was flying constant sorties to slow the advance. Copping, assigned to No. 260 Squadron RAF, took off on a routine ferry flight — simply moving the Kittyhawk from one airfield to another. No combat mission. No enemy intercept. Just a young pilot delivering an airplane.

He got lost. In 1942, desert navigation meant dead reckoning: pick a compass heading, watch the clock, and hope your wind correction held. There were no GPS receivers, no VOR stations, no highways or rivers to follow. Just endless, featureless sand in every direction. Copping drifted south — far south — and vanished.

No. 260 Squadron reported him missing. A search turned up nothing. In a desert the size of the Sahara, finding a single fighter was effectively impossible. Flight Sergeant Dennis Copping was listed as missing in action, and the war moved on.

What Did the Discovery Look Like After 70 Years?

The photographs that emerged after Perka’s discovery rank among the most remarkable images in aviation history. The desert’s extreme aridity had preserved ET574 like a museum piece.

The metal skin remained tight on the airframe. The cockpit instruments were still readable. The reflector gunsight was still mounted. The throttle quadrant, mixture control, and flap handle were all visible. The Allison V-1710 engine was still bolted to the firewall. Both .303-caliber Browning machine guns sat in the wings, with ammunition boxes nearby. Only the fabric control surfaces had rotted away.

The belly landing itself had been textbook — gear up onto flat hardpan, a clean slide to a stop. The propeller blades were curled back from ground contact, but there was no fire damage and no structural collapse.

What Happened to Dennis Copping?

There was no body at the crash site, but the artifacts told a story of survival. Copping’s parachute had been laid out flat on the desert floor, almost certainly used as a sun shade and a signal to overflying aircraft. A battery from the aircraft radio had been removed — likely an attempt to call for help. Pieces of the airplane had been stripped and repositioned.

Dennis Copping lived for some period of time beside his aircraft, waiting for rescue that never came. Then he made a decision: he walked. Which direction, how far, and where he ultimately fell — the Sahara has not revealed those answers. His remains have never been recovered.

The Restoration Debate That Split the Aviation World

The discovery ignited one of the fiercest arguments the warbird community has seen. On one side stood the restoration advocates: ET574 could theoretically be rebuilt and flown again. A flying P-40 is worth millions of dollars, but beyond money, a restored warbird is a living piece of history — engine sound, silhouette against the sky, a visceral connection to the past that no static display can replicate.

On the other side stood preservationists and historians who argued that the crash site was effectively a war grave. Dennis Copping died alone in that desert, and his airplane was the only marker he would ever have. Removing it would erase the story the sand had held for seven decades.

The British government and the Royal Air Force treated the site as a war grave. The Egyptian government, which holds jurisdiction over artifacts found on its soil, also weighed in. The resolution: ET574 was carefully recovered and transported to the El Alamein Military Museum, about 200 miles north of the crash site, with the plan to preserve it in something close to its as-found condition — sand-blasted, time-worn, and unrestored.

The philosophy behind the decision was that the airplane’s decayed beauty told a more powerful story than any gleaming restoration could.

Why the P-40 Kittyhawk Deserves More Respect

The Kittyhawk rarely headlines the list of legendary WWII fighters, but its combat record in North Africa was formidable. The Allison engine lacked a turbocharger, which meant the P-40 ran out of performance above roughly 15,000 feet and couldn’t compete with Bf 109s or Fw 190s at high altitude. But at low level, it was a different story entirely.

The P-40 was fast in a dive, tough enough to absorb significant battle damage, and ideally suited to the low-altitude desert war. The RAF, Royal Australian Air Force, and South African Air Force all flew it in North Africa. The American Volunteer Group — the Flying Tigers — made it iconic in China with their shark-mouth paint schemes.

Curtiss produced nearly 14,000 P-40s across all variants. Today, fewer than 30 survive in any condition, and only a handful are airworthy.

The Question Every Warbird Discovery Forces Us to Answer

ET574’s story echoes across every warbird recovery. When a Spitfire is dug from a French field where its pilot died in 1944, do you rebuild it or preserve it? When a Japanese Zero is pulled from a Pacific reef, is the goal flight or testimony? Each wreck, each story, each pilot demands its own reckoning.

The image that endures from the Copping Kittyhawk is not the airplane itself. It is the parachute — a white rectangle on copper sand, spread flat as a signal to anyone passing overhead. A message that went unanswered for 70 years.

Reports on the El Alamein museum’s preservation progress have been mixed over the years, and the airplane’s final display condition remains a subject of discussion. But the image the world remembers is the one Jakub Perka saw in 2012: a fighter plane in the sand, alone, still waiting.

For further reading, the research of aviation historian Andy Saunders and reporting by Tom Batchelor and the UK Telegraph were instrumental in documenting this story.

Key Takeaways

Flight Sergeant Dennis Copping disappeared on June 28, 1942, after a routine ferry flight over the Egyptian Western Desert; his remains have never been found
His P-40 Kittyhawk (ET574) was discovered in 2012, virtually intact after 70 years in the Sahara’s preserving aridity
Artifacts at the site — a spread parachute, a removed radio battery — confirmed Copping survived the landing and attempted to signal for rescue before walking into the desert
The airplane was recovered and sent to the El Alamein Military Museum for preservation in as-found condition, rather than restored to flying status
The discovery reignited the ongoing debate between warbird restoration and battlefield preservation, a tension the aviation community faces with every significant recovery