For everybody who's interested in the mysterious hurricane or the history of hurricanes in general, here is some more stuff to think about
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I've compared the photo with some paint schemes of Belgian Hurricanes from the period 1939-1940. The Belgian roundel was a lot smaller and was also situated a little more to the bottom of the fuselage in comparison with British Hurricanes. Still, the piece of canvas that was cut out seems a little bit small to carry a Belgian roundel. On the other hand, the roundel was the only thing that was on the Belgian fuselages, so that could explain the absence of squadron codes. Belgian Hurricanes only got a number painted on their rudder (that area isn't on the photo). All the Belgian Hurricanes I've seen did not have a flag painted on the tail, for as far as I see, this hurricane neither...
At first I also considered that this was an airplane that didn't got his national markings painted on yet when it was destroyed. But that seems not logical because there must have been something that those souvenir hunters found interesting enough to cut out...
There are also a lot of facts that make the possibility that this was Hurricane with Belgian Markings doubtfull. The main one is that the version the Belgian military bought (some 20 planes) were all from the early type with the two bladed propellor. It's clear that this can't be one of the original Belgian planes.
An interesting detail is that Belgium possesed at the beginning of the war some Hurricanes that they had captured from the British! In the months that preceded the German offensive Belgium tried very hard to maintain their neutrality. It happened that British Hurricanes ran out of fuel and landed on Belgian soil. Those British pilots where then captured and their planes joined Belgian regiments.
The situation of neutrality caused also some funny events. On day during the phoney war a British Hurricane ran out of fuel and landed on a long straight road, just a few hundred meters from the French border. Civilians informed the pilot that he was on Belgian soil and pushed the plane a few hundred meters down the road so it was back in France again. The plane was refueled and the pilot could rejoin his squadron.
As for me, the black and white undersurface of the Hurricane from the picture and his three-bladed prop, proofs that it was (at least originaly) a British plane. The Belgian undersurfaces were only one color.
It takes a lot of remarks to fit this picture into the story of the captured hurricanes... Still it is not impossible that a British hurricane with three propblades landed in Belgium and was transeferd to a Belgian airfield. It's possible that they didn't repaint the whole plane but just changed the national markings.
In each case, the chance that this plane saw combat if it was Belgian in may 40 is very small, because almost all the Belgian hurricanes were destroyed on the ground during the first hours of the war.
That's a big load of history that that photo would carry with it if it was indeed one of those captured hurricanes. I fear, that once again the truth maybe isn't that impressive and it's just a scrapped hurri without national markings on an field somewhere on the countryside
