The plane could be rearmed with 2,600 rounds in 3 minutes
both modern and dated, revolutionary and conventional. When it first entered service with the RAF in 1937, it was hailed as the fastest fighter in the world, yet its partwooden, part-fabric construction was based on methods that the Hawker company had devised more than a decade earlier.
Its creation was the work of Hawker’s chief designer Sydney Camm, a man who combined a fertile mind with a volcanic temper. ‘He was wonderful at motivating people, more by fear than anything else,’ said one of his Hawker subordinates.
The eldest of 12 children born to a workingclass carpenter from Windsor, Berkshire, Camm had been captivated by aviation in his youth and, at the start of World War I, when he was just 21, he had gone to work for Martin & Handasyde, a pioneering British aircraft and motorbike manufacturer.
The firm went bust in 1922 but the talented Camm soon found another job as a senior draughtsman with the much bigger Hawker company. There, he was to enjoy a uniquely fruitful career until his death in 1966, designing no fewer than 52 types of aircraft, among them the Hawker Harrier, the world’s first vertical take-off and landing fighter.
The Hurricane, given its role in the defeat of the Luftwaffe, was his most significant achievement. Yet, initially, it was a plane that the British Government neither ordered nor even wanted.
In March 1934, amid rapid advances in aero engineering and growing concerns about the obsolescence of RAF fighters, he had submitted to the Air Ministry his design for a ‘High Speed Monoplane, based on a development of his highly successful Hawker Fury biplane’. The Ministry, keen to concentrate its energies on the proposed new Supermarine fighter, which was later to become the Spitfire, rejected Camm’s idea.
AN OFFICIAL wrote: ‘It is regretted that, at the present time, the Department is unable to give active encouragement to the scheme proposed.’ Camm, however, was not a man to give up easily. He pressed on with the project as a private venture and radically improved his design, especially through the incorporation of the powerful new Merlin engine that had just been made by Rolls-Royce.
His persistence was rewarded. When he put forward his reworked proposal in the autumn of 1934, the Air Ministry’s reception was far more favourable, partly because the Supermarine programme was plagued with troubles and partly because there was more political urgency for RAF fighter rearmament in the face of Nazi bellicosity.
An order for the construction of the prototype of Camm’s design was made.
Events moved swiftly after that, highlighting Hawker’s efficiency as a producer. The maiden flight of the Hurricane was held on November 6, 1935, undertaken by Hawker’s test pilot ‘George’ Bulman.
‘It’s a piece of cake,’ Bulman told Camm enthusiastically after he landed. Immediately, the Air Ministry ordered 600, and within two years, the first planes were being delivered to Fighter Command.
One of the first recipients of the new type, Grubby Grice, of 32 Squadron, spoke of the exhilarating experience after biplanes: ‘It was so powerful it took a bit of getting used to. What a thrill it was to be flying so fast. There were no vices in the Hurricane at all.
‘And it was so rugged. You could virtually fly it into the ground and it would just bounce up and land by itself.’
The Hurricane’s reputation was dramatically enhanced in February 1938 when John Gillan flew on a power trial from Edinburgh to London in just 48 minutes, averaging 408.7mph and shattering the world speed record in the process. ‘The latest Edinburgh Express train takes six hours, compared to the remarkable Hurricane flying at seven miles a minute,’ exulted the Daily Mail.
The Air Ministry and RAF were further gratified to find that the Hurricane turned out to be straightforward to manufacture, a crucial fact in the build-up to the Battle of Britain because output from the Spitfire factories was so limited on account of both poor management and the plane’s complexity.
It has been estimated it took 170,000 hours of design, development and construction to get the Hurricane ready for squadron service, compared to 300,000 man-hours for the Spitfire.
Altogether 14,533 Hurricanes were built, the second largest total for any British plane in history after the Spitfire. The last one rolled off the production line in August 1944. But that was after years of sterling service.
In a strange way, the experience of the Hurricane mirrored that of Britain during the war, its setbacks and triumphs coinciding exactly with the wider fortunes of the nation.
After a long period of inaction during the Phoney War, it was overwhelmed by the Germans in Norway and northern France in 1940.
But it fought back magnificently at Dunkirk, inflicting real damage on the Luftwaffe that was trying to prevent the evacuation of the British Army.
‘It was clear we were up against a very tenacious opponent,’ said German fighter pilot Ulrich Steinhilper.
THE Battle of Britain was the Hurricane’s finest hour, as its pilots bravely flew sortie after sortie to repulse the Luftwaffe. All the assets of the plane — its firepower from eight Browning guns, its robustness, its ease of maintenance and its agility — were marshalled in the cause of national salvation.
The excitement of combat was well captured by Tom Neil, of 249 Squadron, when he took on a formation of German bombers on the morning of September 7. As Neil surged forward, he opened fire. ‘ The Hurricane’s eight Brownings did not chatter, the noise was of a thick coarse fabric being ripped, a concentrated tearing which shook the aircraft with a vibration that was indescribably pleasant . . . the briefest ripple of twinkling lights. Like a child’s sparkler. I was hitting them! I couldn’t miss.’
The Battle of Britain saw the Hurricane at the peak of its performance. ‘It was the aircraft for the right season. It came at a time when it literally saved the country and it performed magnificently,’ said renowned test pilot Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown.
But after that, it went into decline as it became increasingly outdated. Like the British Armed Forces, it suffered a desperate period from late 1940 until mid-1942, when it took part in a catalogue of grim defeats, including Greece, Crete, Tobruk and Singapore.
It proved hopeless as a night fighter during the Blitz and ineffectual against the Germans during the siege of Malta. The only bright point was the continuing heroism of its pilots such as Pat Pattle, the highest scoring ace in the Hurricane, who scored probably 35 kills before he was shot down and killed over Greece in April 1941.
But, just as with Britain, the tide turned for the Hurricane from 1942 as the plane became increasingly effective as a fast fighter-bomber, its thick wings ideal for carrying the extra load.
It was invaluable in attacks on German lines during the victorious North Africa campaign, while it also inflicted serious damage on the Japanese in Burma. Right up until the final Allied victory it was in action.
Sydney Camm’s doughty fighter, rejected by the Air Ministry in early 1934, had made it through to the end of the war.
The Hawker engineer put it well in a post-war interview: ‘Without those Hurricanes, you and I would not be sitting where we are today.’
HURRICANE: Victor Of The Battle Of Britain, by Leo McKinstry, £9.99, John Murray.