The FReeper Foxhole Remembers Hurricanes vs Spitfires (1936-1945) - Jan.27th, 2005

Aviation History. | November 1994 | David Alan Johnson

[SAMWolf]

Lord,

Keep our Troops forever in Your care

Give them victory over the enemy...

Grant them a safe and swift return...

Bless those who mourn the lost.
.

FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer
for all those serving their country at this time.

.................................................................. .................... ...........................................

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Friendly Rivals: Hurricanes and Spitfires

Although the relative merits of the two World War II aircraft continue to be debated, the dissimilar stablemates complemented one another in combat and together saved a country.

Which is better, the Supermarine Spitfire or the Hawker Hurricane? That question has been asked by pilots, historians and air enthusiasts since 1940. It does not have a definitive answer, however, each aircraft had its strong points and its disadvantages. Although both aircraft played a decisive role in the Battle of Britain they could not have been more different from one another. Each was created under a completely different set of circumstances and came from totally different backgrounds and antecedents. The Spitfire owed its famous graceful lines and speed to its early ancestors, evolving as a fighter from a series of extremely successful racing seaplanes that were designed in the 1920s--and 1930s. All of those racers were built by the firm of Supermarine Ltd. and were designed by one man--Reginald J. Mitchell. The innovative Mitchell has been called one of the most brilliant designers Britain has ever produced. His designs really were ahead of their time. In 1925, when he began building racing airplanes, streamlining was considered more a theoretical exercise than an engineering possibility. But Mitchell made engineering theories more than just possibilities; he turned them into brilliant successes.


Reginald J. Mitchell

Mitchell's efforts at streamlining produced aircraft that were not only graceful but also among the fastest in the world. In 1927, his S.5 racer won the Schneider Trophy with a speed of 281.65 mph. Four years later, his elegant S.6B captured the Schneider Trophy outright for Britain with a speed of 340.08. Later, on September 29, 1931, his S.6B, fitted with a special "Sprint" engine with its horsepower upgraded to 2,550, pushed the world speed record to 407.5 mph.


Supermarine S.5

During that time, Britain's Air Ministry began looking for a replacement for the Royal Air Force's (RAF) standard fighters, the Bristol Bulldog and Gloster Gladiator, both of which were biplanes. Knowing he had the experience and the reputation he acquired by designing his Schneider Trophy winners going for him, Mitchell decided to make a bid for the Air Ministry's contract to design this new fighter. The Supermarine firm had been taken over by the industrial giant Vickers by this time; the new corporation was known as Supermarine Aviation Works (Vickers) Ltd.


Supermarine F.7/30

The first prototype of the aircraft that would become known as the Spitfire was an odd-looking affair. Officially designated the F.7/30, it was a gull-winged monoplane with an open cockpit and spatted undercarriage. It looked more like a German Junkers Ju-87 Stuka dive bomber than the Battle of Britain fighter. Mitchell was not satisfied with his F.7/30 for a number of reasons. For one thing, it was underpowered--its Rolls-Royce Goshawk II engine gave it a speed of only 238 mph. So he began to experiment. He added a larger engine, enclosed the cockpit, and gave his new fighter a retractable undercarriage with smaller, thinner wings. These thin, elliptically shaped wings would become the fighter's most recognizable feature. Mitchell continued to modify his design in 1933 and 1934. The larger engine he had in mind was supplied by Rolls-Royce--a new, 12-cylinder, liquid-cooled power plant called simply the PV-12. Rolls-Royce would rename this engine the Merlin--a name that would become legend among aircraft power plants. The new fighter, now designated the F.10/35, developed into a low-wing interceptor with retractable undercarriage, flaps, enclosed cockpit, and oxygen for the pilot. The Merlin engine promised to give it all the speed Mitchell wanted and the Air Ministry would require. For armament, he gave his fighter four wing-mounted .303-caliber machine guns. Air Vice Marshal Hugh "Stuffy" Dowding, Air Member for Supply and Research, had been in charge of the RAF's technical development since 1930. He was favorably impressed by Mitchell's F.10/35 except for one item-he wanted eight machine guns. Recent tests had shown that the minimum firepower needed to shoot down an enemy bomber was six or, preferably, eight guns, each capable of firing 1,000 rounds per minute. With that armament, it was estimated that a pilot would need only two seconds to destroy an enemy bomber in the air-the time during which a fighter pilot would be able to keep the enemy in his sights, it was thought.



Dowding had the future in mind. He knew that the German Luftwaffe was expanding and that Adolf Hitler's ambition would probably lead to an armed conflict between Britain and Germany. His farsightedness would pay off eight years later, in 1940, when he was chief of RAF Fighter Command.



Because of his aircraft's elliptical wings, Mitchell was able to fit four Browning .303 caliber machine guns into each wing without increasing drag or radically altering the design. With that armament, along with the RollsRoyce Merlin engine and the other features he had designed, Mitchell knew that his fighter would be a match for any aircraft the Luftwaffe might produce. Now all he had to do was convince the Air Ministry.



Mitchell's fighter first took to the air on March 5, 1936. It had been given a name-the Spitfire-by Vickers and made official by the Air Ministry. (Mitchell himself did not like the name very much; he called it "a bloody silly name.") This Spitfire was flown by J. "Mutt" Summers, chief test pilot for Vickers and Supermarine, out of the Eastleigh airport in Hampshire. It was unarmed and fitted with a fixed-pitch wooden propeller. After landing from his test flight, Summers told his ground crew, "I don't want anything touched."

Although some alterations would be made, he realized from just one flight that the Spitfire was an outstanding fighter.



Following some persuasive arguments from Air Vice Marshal Dowding, the Air Ministry agreed with Summers' assessment. With a maximum speed of 342 mph, the plane was classed as the fastest military aircraft in the world. Less than three months after Summers' test flight, on June 3, 1936, a contract was placed with Supermarine for 300 Spitfires. Six hundred more were ordered the next year. By the time Britain went to war with Germany on September 3, 1939, the war that Air Vice Marshal Dowding had foreseen, 2,160 Spitfires were on order for the RAF.

But R.J. Mitchell never lived to see the success of his creation. In 1937, at the age of 42, he died of cancer.


Sir Sidney Camm

Although the Spitfire was the product of one man's imagination, the Hawker Hurricane did not owe its origins to any single individual. It was the result of an evolutionary process that began with the fabric-covered biplanes of World War I. Revolutionary for its time-it was the RAF's first monoplane fighter and its first fighter to exceed 300 mph-the Hurricane was still a wood-and-fabric airplane. It was once referred to as "a halfway house between the old biplanes and the new Spitfires." Sidney Camm, Hawker Aircraft's chief designer, was the leading force behind the Hurricane's development. In the early 1930s, when the Air Ministry began looking to replace its biplanes with a more modem fighter, Camm already had a design for what he called his Fury monoplane, a modification of the graceful and highly maneuverable Fury biplane. The Fury was the direct descendant of Sopwith's Pup, Triplane, Camel, Dolphin and Snipe-fighters of World War I. Hawker Aircraft Ltd. had begun its life as Sopwith Ltd.


RollsRoyce's PV-12 (Merlin)

Apart from the fact that the Hurricane was a monoplane, its major differences from the Fury were its power plant and armament. The Fury was powered by the Rolls-Royce Kestrel, which gave it a maximum speed of 184 mph. But the Kestrel was much too small for the Hurricane. When Camm heard about RollsRoyce's PV-12 engine, the Merlin, he modified his new monoplane to accommodate it.

[snippy_about_it]

And where's "Daddy Warbucks" during all this?

LOL. You mean "Daddy NObucks"?

[Valin]

In the Air Force there is a base called bumf*ck AFB for people who make this sort of....error.

[snippy_about_it]

FWIW, I envy the rigors of your business; there's compassion in your words.

You're young yet, you could start early. We both wish we had been able to do this when we were younger. I think for us it was a matter of both need and being at an age where you could say "What the heck" and go for it. Winner take all, or not. ;-)

[Valin]

And where's "Daddy Warbucks" during all this?
LOL. You mean "Daddy NObucks"?


Someone is saying terrible things about you....there more than likely true but still terrible.
/troublemaker

[snippy_about_it]

;-)

[Valin]

That was Carlos (my evil twin)

that's my story and I'm stickin with it!



It's bedtime for bonzo.

[SAMWolf]

LOL! More like "LowBucks" but I'm working towards "No"

[Iris7]

Greatly enjoyed your pictures of our lads of the Kosciuszko Squadron. One can see in their eyes that they were some hard, hard boys.

Welcome to the Foxhole and the Free Republic, ms_68.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!!

[alfa6]

If this is the same Merian C. Cooper who was in ms_68's post he was also the involved with the 14th AF out of China. Working off of dim memory here but IIRC he initially started out on the trasnsport side of the air war business and moved over to bombers.

The Japanese ridiculed Cooper in their radio broadcast saying that they had nothiing to fear from a "btoken down transport pilot"

Welllll, on one of the first raids on Hong Kong Cooper had a bunch of leaflets printed up saying to the effect that the rais was courtesy of a broken down transport pilot.

snippy, SAM here might be another Foxhole thread when things calm down, he he he he

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

[stand watie]

GM, ya'll!

free dixie,sw

[archy]

That should tell you which was the superior ship overall.

While I am not sure of the exact numbers, I like to think of the Hurricane as our P-40 Warhawk's contemporary (which served admirably in China with the Flying Tigers even though it was no match one-on-one with a Zero) and the Spit as the contemporary of our Mustang.

That's pretty much an apples-vs.-oranges comparison, and a pretty poor analogy even with reference to U.S. allied aircraft. A better pick would likely be to the much-debated merits of the U.S. P-51 fighter versus those of the chunkier but equally beloved P-47.

I've got stick time in neither the Spit nor the Hurry-box, but have known a couple of Brit airplane drivers, some with a definite preference for one or the other, and a couple who were quite happy with both. The one whose views I most respect was a Hurricane flew both and dismissed the differences as minimal, though the wise pilot took any slight advantage or edge he could get.

But there's no doubt that the number of roughly two Hurricanes for every Spit was a significant factor; on 08 August 1940, the RAF could call on 32 squadrons of Hurricanes and 19 of Spitfires. And the Hurricanes racked up far more enemy kills than the Spitfires accordingly.

Both were lovely and dependable aircraft that clearly reflected both the personalities of their designers and the ever-true industrial designer's creed: form follows function. I'd dearly love an hour or two in either; there's at least one two-seat Spitfire trainer still flying, and a few single-place versions of both.

They sound as pretty as they look as well.

[PhilDragoo]

10/25/42

Tenth AF

Japanese aircraft attack A/Fs connected with the India-China air transport route, heavily bombing Dinjan and Chabua fields and scoring hits also at Mohanbari and Sookerating. 10 US airplanes are destroyed and 17 badly damaged; 9 Japanese aircraft are downed. 12 B-25's and 7 P-40's of CATF, led by Col Merian C Cooper, hit Kowloon Docks at Hong Kong. 21 airplanes intercept. 1 B-25 and 1 P-40 are shot down. This marks the first loss of a CATF B-25 in combat. The Japanese interceptors are virtually annihilated. During 25/26 Oct 6 B-25's, on first CATF night strike, continue pounding Hong Kong, bombing North Pt power plant which provides electricity for the shipyards. 3 other B-25's bomb the secondary tgt, Canton warehouse area, causing several large explosions and fires.

From U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II: Combat Chronology

~~~

Colonel Haynes arrived at Dinjan to assume his new duties on 23 April. With him was Col. Robert L. Scott, who had flown out in the same flight from the United States, and they were joined at Dinjan by Col. Merian C. Cooper. The task confronting them, to say the least, was discouraging. Although the equipment of the Americans was limited to thirteen DC-3's and C-47's, the single airfield already accommodated two British squadrons and was so crowded as to make proper dispersal of aircraft impossible. While barracks were under construction, the men were housed in mud and bamboo bashas with dirt floors. Messing facilities were poor; the quality of the food worse. Quartered more than ten miles from the airdrome, the Americans depended entirely on the British for ground transportation.42 Even more disconcerting was the absence of anything approaching an adequate defense against air attack by the Japanese. A single British pursuit squadron operated without benefit of an air warning system, and there were no antiaircraft guns.43 To avoid the probably disastrous effect of a sudden attack, the Americans undertook to get their planes into the air by dawn, and all servicing and cargo operations for planes landing during the day had to be handled with the utmost expedition. Under these circumstances, ordinary working hours were out of the question. The men generally worked from long before daybreak until late at night.44

From The Army Air Forces in WWII

~~~

DOROTHY JORDAN
Date of Birth: August 9, 1908
Place of Birth: Clarksville, Tennessee
Date of Death: December 7, 1988
Place of Death: Los Angeles, California
Cause of Death: heart failure
Spouse: Merian C. Cooper
With Robert Montgomery in Love in the Rough (1930) and Shipmates (1931).

[alfa6]

By my quick count I have pics of at least 4 differnet two seat Spits.

A couple of pics from Oshkosh, last year IIRC of a Spit two seater for ya archy.

Watch that keyboard :-)

And for good measure here is a pic of 16 Spitfires in flight, yee haw

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

[Gorjus]

Sorry for the lagging response, but I'm just catching up.

According to Len Deighton's book, "Fighter", the Hurricane did indeed have a tighter turning radius. That's because it had a slightly lower wing loading and a slightly better maximum lift coefficient due to a thicker wing section. Similarly, a P-40 had a tighter turning radius - at its best altitude - than a P-51 at its best altitude.

But that tighter turning radius cost in top speed. Taken to an extreme, this is similar to the fact a Cessna 150 can turn more tightly than an F-16 - because the C-150 is turning at 100mph (generating perhaps 1.5g), and the F-16 needs to be going almost 400 mph for it's best turn rate(at which point it is generating 9gs) or about 300 mph for it's tightest turn radius (less and it loses lift). At those conditions, the C-150 has a turn radius of 445 ft, while the F-16 has a turn radius of 1002 feet.

I guess I'll just point out an issue with the logic of your second statement. You said, "I suspect . . . " and then, "That should tell you which is the superior ship overall." Sorry, but all it does it tell us what you think would be the superior ship overall. I could (logically) say that, "I suspect that if all Britain's fighters had been Hurricanes the Battle of Britan would still have been won, while if they had all been Spitfires the outcome would not have been as certain." What conclusion can be drawn from my statement or from yours? Only that someone has the opinion that one or the other is better.

In point of fact, my own opinion is that either fighter would have been able to stop the Luftwaffe from keeping the Royal Navy out of the Channel to block an invasion, and that's what the Battle of Britain was really about. In the end, this would have been an attrition issue - would the Luftwaffe run out of planes before the Royal Navy (protected by fighters) ran out of ships? I think either the Hurricane or the Spitfire would have been up to this challenge - if Hitler ever tried to invade. In part, this is due to some of the other factors mentioned, notably that the Hurricanes were easier to repair (and to build in the first place) so that they'd have had a better chance at keeping an umbrella over the Royal Navy. And of course, the Royal Navy would have contributed to its own defense (though as was shown off Indonesia, dive bombers and torpedo planes can sink ships which do not have air cover, at least with the anti-aircraft armament contemporary in 1940).

On your last point - did you know that Curtiss did the preliminary design for what became the Mustang? The principal change was to put a laminar flow wing on what is - under the skin - largely a P-40. In fact, the original Mustang (A-36, and P-51A) had the same Allison engine as the contemporary P-40E Warhawk. And at low level, the P-40 is a better fighter. The P-40 (at low altitude) was faster than a Zero, and handled must better than a Mustang - allowing the P-40 pilot to get more performance from his plane without risk of catastrophic loss of control. The Merlin engine, and in particular the supercharger, allowed the Mustang to retain power to an altitude where it could take full advantage of its laminar flow wing for speed, but it always handled poorly (high stick forces and terrible stall characteristics) meaning it was a slasher not a dogfighter. (That's not exclusive, of course, and the P-51 is certainly maneuverable. However, on a relative basis, the sharp, unpredictable stall characteristics of the P-51's first generation laminar flow wing are a serious limit on its maneuverability relative to aircraft with a more tolerant wing section.)

In terms of 'contemporary' elements, the Hurricane and P-40 are essentially contemporaries in timing and performance, but the only real contemporary for the Spitfire in performance, among US planes, was probably the F6F Hellcat. By the time the USAAF had moved beyond the P-40, they were all about speed and range, not tight turning. So the P-47, P-38, and P-51 are all significantly faster than a Spitfire, with significantly longer range (much longer in the case of the Mustang), yet none were as good at close-in dogfighting.

Sources: Len Deighton's book "Fighter" as I mentioned, is my source for much of the information on the Spitfire and Hurricane. There is an article called, "Ending the Argument" in the Experimental Aircraft Association magazine from about 1985 that compared the Corsair, P-51, P-47, and F6F which talked about handling qualities and performance.

(PS. There's no doubt in my mind what aircraft I'd like to have flown. If I had my choice of any 'job' at any time it history, it would have been to fly a Spitfire in the Battle of Britain, even though over 90% of the pilots who flew Spitfires in the summer of 1940 did not survive the war, even if they made it past the 'Battle of Britain' itself.)