The Hawker Hurricane - the RAF's forgotten fighter star of the Battle of Britain.

The Hurricane or the Spitfire? The Hawker business or the Supermarine business? Sydney Camm or R.J. Mitchell? Which will win the battle of the Battle of Britain fighters?

Which was better? I would say that they were both better than each other!

Although they were both built to meet the same specification, they were designed to differing design outlooks and were both unbeatable in their chosen areas. The Spitfire was a result of a decision that everything in the design must add to outright flying performance even at the expense of other criteria - the "high technology" route. The Hurricane approach was that the maximum achievable with the technology of the day was to be aimed for whilst meeting the full range of issues affecting a fighting machine. One of the key requirements of the Hawker design was to ensuring that large numbers of operational aircraft were delivered in the shortest possible time.

The Hurricane was the RAF's first 300mph fighter and even as the Battle of Britain raged, Hawker were well on their way to providing the first 400mph fighter in the shape of the mighty Typhoon. Before the war had ended this had been added to by the even better Tempest.

The Hurricane was larger than both the Spitfire and the Bf109. For absolute speed that may have been bad but that disadvantage gave an opposing advantage of greater wing area, with lower wing loading that resulted in a better rate of turn than either of its contemporaries. This is one of the key "performance indicators" of a fighter. A turning radius quoted as 800 feet for the Hurricane and 880 feet for the Spitfire.

The Spitfire has always been regarded as the more responsive of the two. This did, however, have the disadvantage of being unstable when firing the eight machine guns, resulting in difficulty keeping the fire on target compared with the Hurricane that was more stable under the recoil of the same guns.

The thick wing of the Hurricane limited its maximum speed but that price gave other advantages. The large strong wing allowed a much wider undercarriage than the Spitfire with corresponding advantages of stability on rough airfields in battle theatres around the world, better performance on waterlogged airstrips and was easier for the less experienced pilot. All of which reduced accidents, improving the aircrafts serviceability level and versatility. The thick wing gave advantages over the Spitfire in that unlike the Spit's widely spaced armament the Hurri had it's machine guns in compact blocks of four in each wing. As well as the advantage of concentrated firepower, this also gave the ground crew a more efficient re-arming procedure that resulted in aircraft saving precious time in the race to return to operational status after a mission. The larger wings also easily accepted the four 20mm cannons (that became standard British armament after the Battle of Britain), whilst the Spitfire had to make do with just two cannons and keep four of the old machine guns until much later. After the defensive action of the summer of 1940 the two aircraft were used in an offensive role. When called upon to perform ground attack in the thicker air of lower levels, the sophisticated wing of the Spitfire was not at ease with the stresses encountered. There were stories of Spit wings in huge piles at maintenance units as fractured wings were replaced after sharp pullouts at low levels - something that the more solid Hawker products were not affected by.

Without the Spitfire the cost of success would have been greater in fighters lost to enemy action and the battle would have been longer due to the Bf109's high altitude performance advantage over the Hurricane.

The Hurricane was manufactured and repaired with ease and able to use a wide range of non-aerospace sub-contractors. Its solid construction, concentrated firepower and steady firing platform made it the better weapon for the fighter's role of actually destroying enemy aircraft. If the Hurricane had been delayed long enough to improve it's design to match the speed of the Spitfire, vital months output would have been lost in the crucial build-up to the battles of France and Britain and even then production would have been slower. Only the Hurricane could have guaranteed sufficient aircraft for the battle (and even then numbers were desperately small).
Without the high performance Spitfire the cost of success may have been greater and the battle may have been longer but without the Hurricane the Battle of Britain would have been lost, and possibly following that the whole war.

Whilst Supermarine continued to improve the Spitfire, Hawker chief designer Camm developed a string of better and better designs. Is the Spitfire so well regarded because, with the early death of its designer, there was no longer the driving force at Supermarine to overshadow it with later improved designs?

V1.3 - 17 September 2015. ---- recommended resolution (1366 x 768)

© David John Hodgkinson 2000-2015. All rights reserved.