Finnish Forces

Lauri Pekuri

Lauri Olavi Pekuri (1916–1999) was a Finnish fighter ace of WWII. He flew 314 missions and scored 18½ aerial victories. Pekuri was shot down twice: first on June 25, 1944 his brewster was shot down by 4 Hurricanes and he crash landed the flaming brewster into a small lake, where he swam ashore and walked 20km to Finnish lines. The second time was on June 16, 1944 when he was attacking a group of Il-2's and his engine was hit causing it to stop. Lauri managed to bail out and wandered around for a week before he was captured by Soviet troops and he spent the rest of the war in jail at Leningrad. The Brewster which Pekuri crashlanded in 1942, was lifted from the lake in 1998 and it's the only remaining authentic Brewster in the world.