HAWKER HURRICANE WORDS MIKE HASKEW

“THE FIRST OPERATIONAL MONOPLANE RAF FIGHTER, THE HURRICANE WAS ALSO THE FIRST SUCH AIRCRAFT TO EXCEED AN AIRSPEED OF 480 KILOMETRES PER HOUR”

Although its legacy exists in the shadow of its RAF cohort, the Supermarine Spitfire, the Hawker Hurricane was the workhorse of Fighter Command early in World War II. At the beginning of the Battle of Britain, in late summer 1940, half the squadrons of Fighter Command were equipped with Hurricanes, while only 20 were flying the Spitfire. The remainder were assigned the inferior and vulnerable Boulton Paul Defiant.

The Hurricane also wrote heroic chapters in the aerial defence of the island of Malta in the Mediterranean, in North Africa, and on the European continent, as the Nazi war machine invaded France and the Low Countries and the British Expeditionary Force required tactical air support. Throughout the war