Raymond Towers Holmes (20 August 1914 – 27 June 2005) was a British Royal Air Force fighter pilot during the Second World War who is best known for an event that occurred during the Battle of Britain.

He became famous when he reportedly saved Buckingham Palace from being hit by German bombing by ramming his Hawker Hurricane into a Dornier Do 17 bomber over London.

According to the now common account, on 15 September 1940, known as Battle of Britain Day, Sergeant Holmes was flying a Hawker Hurricane fighter when he spotted a formation of three Dornier Do 17 bombers of Kampfgeschwader 76 heading for central London, to make a bombing attempt.

As the airflow cleared the oil away from his windscreen, Holmes saw that he was dangerously close to the Dornier, and ramming the stick forward, passed beneath the bomber.

Holmes quickly climbed ahead of it, to avoid any machine-gun fire, then swung around to make a head-on attack.

When he finally managed to pull his ripcord, the jolt shook off his flying boots and he found himself swinging violently about.

[8] Holmes landed in a narrow back garden, and ended up dangling inside an empty dustbin.

[8][9] The Dornier pilot, Feldwebel Robert Zehbe, bailed out, only to die later reportedly of wounds suffered during the attack.

As the RAF did not practise ramming as an air combat tactic, this was considered an impromptu manoeuvre, and an act of selfless courage.

When recovered, he became part of No 81 Squadron, and was sent to the Northern Front near Murmansk in Soviet Russia to help train the Russian air force in flying the Hawker Hurricane.

After leaving the RAF in late 1945, he returned to journalism, joining his father's news agency covering Liverpool Crown Court for local and national newspapers.

The discovery was featured on the National Geographic Channel documentary, "The Search for the Lost Fighter Plane".

The story that Holmes deliberately crashed into the Dornier and that the German plane was attempting to bomb the palace has been challenged - notably by Alfred Price and Stephen Bungay.

In one account, Zehbe developed engine trouble and lagged half a mile (800 metres) behind the main bomber stream.

During its spinning dive, the gravitational force on the Dornier caused its bombs to be released, which hit or landed near to the Palace nearby, damaging the building.

He saw a lone crewmember bail out as he made his third attack and, during the last pass, he felt a "jar" which caused his aircraft to fall into an uncontrollable spin, and that he first believed the Dornier exploded beneath him, before seeing it crash while he was on his parachute.

On my fourth attack from the port beam a jar shook my starboard wing as I passed over the e/a and I went into an uncontrollable spin.

I bailed out and as I landed I saw the Dornier hit the ground by Victoria Station, half a mile [800 metres] away.