Battle of Britain without Hawker Hurricane; pick another fighter

[Shortround6]

To replace the Hurricane you need a plane that you could have 2000 of by the end of July 1940. The American aircraft industry, large as it was in 1939-40, was a mere infant compared to what it would become. It really wasn't in a position to supply 2000 fighters from the summer of 1938 to the summer of 1940 of any type let alone planes that flew as prototypes in 1939.

The Hawk 75 was as good as it was going to get as far as what was available and while the problems could have been fixed ( and were in the P-40 which used the same basic airframe from the firewall back) there is no reason for British factories to sit idle while american planes are purchased. American planes were purchased because Britihs production was already maxed out for the time( new factories were under construction but time was needed as was equipment for the factories and time was needed to train workers)

 

[The Basket]

There was no rule saying you need a modern fighter force in 1940. The RAF was lucky that it had. Others didn't.

It is odd to think that decisions taken 6 years earlier would have unforeseen consequences.

The P-51 was a british spec airplane so buying an American fighter was certainly planned.

 

[michaelmaltby]

".... The P-51 was a british spec airplane so buying an American fighter was certainly planned...."

Was it ...? Or did the British purchasing commission in the US start off trying to buy North American Aviation-built P-40's but were convinced by NAA execs that they could build a better airframe fast, and they did. My point is not to dispute Britain's perceived need to buy in the USA .... buy what, though?

MM

 

[oldcrowcv63]

Back in the Before Times, just out of college, I worked for a year as a test engineer at the Curtiss Wright Corporation engine plant in NJ. They told many stories of their WWII salad days. One was the story that purportedly got them out of the fighter building business. Understand this is a story told on the factory floor by plant foreman to their new hires (of which there weren't many at the time. CW having been reduced to overhauling P&W J-57s and its old J-65s (Armstrong Siddley Sapphire licensed built engines, although some W-Cyclone 3350 engines remained on test stands since the DC-7 and Super Connie were still flying). Supposedly at the start of WWII, the USAAF came to Curtis Wright with a set of specs or requests to build an army fighter to replace the P-40. (This might have been the P-60 upgrade which I had never heard of at the time). After long debate on its design, CW told the army reps. Don't tell us how to build a fighter that something we know how to do. The P-40 was thus the last production fighter CW built for the USA. I guess this is simply a contrast to a procurement request by a US company regarding its primary product. NA remained in business for many years after the war and of course CW slowly died after receiving the army's historically large order for over 500 P-40s. NA evidently had new ideas, whereas CW was more conservative. at least the Curtiss Airframe shop was. I got the impression the Wright engine side was more innovative and persisted for years after Curtiss airframes shut down.

 

[Shortround6]

The British purchasing commission bought Lockheed's proposal for a bomber conversion of the Electra 14 airliner because they could get it quickly, quickly being less than two years for a new design. Same with the fighters. And once again look at British production in 1937-1940. They were turning out a very large number of aircraft for the time. Around 2000 Hurricanes had been built before the start of the BoB, if not the Hurricane the British did have the capacity to build something else.

 

[renrich]

Lend lease may not have existed until 1941 but on 11 June, 1940, the US transferred to Britain:
500,000 Enfields
129000000 cartridges
895 75 mm cannon with 1000000 rounds
316 mortars
25000 BARs
more than 80000 MGs
93 Northrup bombers
50 dive bombers

FDR was going to do everything in his power ( and some stuff outside his power) to aid Britain and that would include AC engines.

 

[Njaco]

It was because the RAF won the BoB that convinced Roosevelt that supplying England would be worthwhile. Only after the BoB was material sent to England - either bought or Lend-Lease - increased.

 

[Vincenzo]

wait 11th june is not after bob

 

[Njaco]

I said bought or lend-lease. LL wasn't until 1941. Before that, its purchase orders.

 

[nuuumannn]

The Brits bought American equipment because there was a war on and they needed more of what they had. Before the war the Brits would not have purchased foreign equipment if it could be built in Britain. As I pointed out earlier, there were plenty of fighter specifications produced around the mid 1930s, not to mention those specifically written for the Spit and Hurri.

A revision of F.5/34 (Gloster and Martin Baker; the mean looking MB.2)? Accelerated development of the Boulton Paul Defiant? The same of the Westland Whirlwind to F.37/35? You could also guess that the specification that became F.18/37 (which produced the Hawker Tornado and Typhoon) could have been pushed forward had nothing further come along; other than Hawker, both Bristol and Gloster produced designs for this.

Although I mentioned the Typhoon and Tornado; presuming there are no Hurricanes, there probably wouldn't be any of these either, so they are a moot point. I mentioned them because these fighters were built to that spec.

I agree with oldcrowcv63's comments in post 79, also yours, John. There'd be more Spitfires sooner. And that's not such a bad thing, is it?

 

[Elmas]

omissis
I agree with oldcrowcv63's comments in post 79, also yours, John. There'd be more Spitfires sooner. And that's not such a bad thing, is it?

I can't see it so easy....

Under the skin Hurricane and Spifire were completely different aircrafts, that required different construction techniques ( by far more complicated the Spitfire), different skills from the workers (much higher those required for the Spit), in short terms a complete different industrial approach.

Is was not very easy to get it in short time.

Even if Air Ministry was hysterically asking for more Spitfires from 1938, 1939 and 1940, by May 1940 Castle Bromwich had not yet built its first Spitfire…….

 

[rank amateur]

I agree. The Spit took a lot more manhours to built. Especially the wings. Replacing the unbuild Hurricanes with the same amount of Spitfires would not have been very likely. Stil I can't imagine the RAF not having a hurricane-like fighter in development by 1937 when the me109 was already in service and the threat of war seemed eminent

 

[buffnut453]

Granted the Spit was a more modern design but let's not get carried away with it somehow being "revolutionary" because it was all-metal. Other RAF aircraft of the time were also all-metal monocoque construction - the Battle, the Blenheim, even the Skua! There was hardly a shortage of sufficiently skilled labour to build more Spits if that's what was needed in the late-30s. Now, would there have been as many Spits as there were Hurris? Perhaps not but there might have been enough. However, I tend to agree with some of the other posts that it was far more likely that situations were reversed - Fighter Command operating Gladiators, Defiants and a few Hurricanes with no Spitfires - had different decisions been made in the mid/late '30s.

 

[Elmas]

Certainly there were other (semi)monocoque airplanes built in U.K. before WWII but it is not so true that shifting from the construction of a Skua to the production of a Spitfire is an easy task.
The jigs are of course completely different, the extruded alminium is different,as well as other thousands parts.

Every industrial production has is bottlenecks, which have to be patiently resolved one by one before a huge mass of aeroplanes can go out from the factory.

This is apparent nowadays, let alone in 1939/40:

http://www.buffalo.edu/news/pdf/December07/ChicagoTribPritchardBoeing.pdf

http://leeds-faculty.colorado.edu/s...ISES Readings/boeing global outsourcing 1.pdf

IEEE Xplore - Manufacturing Mayday

 

[oldcrowcv63]

Aside from its superficial resemblence to the Curtiss P-36 and Mitsubishi A6M, what I like about the Gloster F5/34 is its design heritage, like the F4F, it apparently owed much to its very successful biplane (Gauntlet Gladiator) progenitors. Without an end result (I mean an actual production aircraft, proven in combat) that heritage strikes me as a simple formula for success in both its performance and logistical attributes. I would have put money on it being a good stand in for the Hurricane. Perhaps, without a Merlin, not quite as sharpely performing but relatively easy to build and maintain, with pleasant handling for the inexperienced pilot, and perhaps engine upgrades from P&W and Wright that would have improved performance somewhat. Kind of a P-51 in reverse. I suspect it would have made a pretty good naval fighter too.

It also seems a turretless, single seat, Boulton Paul Defiant provided a Merlin powered contender as a stand in for the Hurricane whose performace in some respects may have exceeded those of the fighter it would have replaced. With a demonstrated top speed of 360 mph and its proposed armament of 12 .303 MG or 4 20 mm cannon it certainly would have had the firepower. BPD is probably the most realistic replacement although a bit later in development and consequently only available in diminished numbers.

 

[Readie]

We also have the MB2 to consider. Put a Merlin in that ? It had the firepower as well....
I also like the Venom. Again with 8 machine guns. Pity about the power plant though.
John

 

[buffnut453]

Certainly there were other (semi)monocoque airplanes built in U.K. before WWII but it is not so true that shifting from the construction of a Skua to the production of a Spitfire is an easy task.
The jigs are of course completely different, the extruded alminium is different,as well as other thousands parts.

Every industrial production has is bottlenecks, which have to be patiently resolved one by one before a huge mass of aeroplanes can go out from the factory.

I'm not denying any of that, but I am objecting to the notion that somehow the British aviation industry was stuck in "string and fabric" production methods during the late 1930s and hence building more Spits was somehow impossible (assuming no reduction in overall factory capacity etc).

 

[Readie]

Miles M.20 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is interesting too. 'The quick build' and presumably disposable fighter....
Shows the way some designers were thinking just after the BoB
John

 

[rank amateur]

Now this is one I never understood. In 1937 Miles had the Kestrel, a modern trainer with a retractable landing gear that managed a topspeed of nearly 300 mph on an engine with only 745 hp. That must have been a decent design, so why didn't they use the wing including the retractable landinggear on the M20. The M20 had a performance that is called "adequate" but I never stopped wondering what the Kestrel (the plane, not the engine) could have achieved with a 1300 hp engine.

 

[nuuumannn]

Regarding the Spitfire not being built in large numbers; sure, when we look at things as they happened that was most certainly the case, but this thread is about if there were no Hurricanes and what would have happened as a result. Remember, in order to facilitate the construction of more Hurricanes, approval was given to build Hawker's Langley Factory and to give Gloster Hurricane production as a result of the Inskip Doctrine and the Munich Crisis. It is not unreasonable to suspect that that this course of action would have been taken with regards to the Spitfire and what ever other fighter the Air Ministry ordered alongside it, if there were no Hurricanes. Of course the Spit was more difficult to build back then, but they didn't have trouble once Castle Bromwich got up to speed and why, if enough impetus was given, would improving Spitfire production not produce a larger number of airframes before the war? Perhaps not of the numbers we saw of Hurricanes available during the Battle of Britain, but there would have been more available to the RAF and of course, there would also be the other type, whatever that might be, perhaps the Gloster F.5/34 or Martin Baker MB.2?

Ironically, these days warbird restorers find the Hurricane a far more difficult proposition for restoration and reconstruction than the Spitty.

Oldcrow, I like your suggestion about the turretless Defiant, as that would have been a strong contender for a new Fighter Command type, but in reality Boulton Paul had issues getting the Defiant production up and running; political, the decision by the Air Ministry to build the Roc - baaaad call by the AM, etc, so the turretless Defiant would have been available in very small numbers by the war's beginning, assuming that it could be contracted out since BP were having difficulty with the Defiant in its own factory, but a promising machine it would have been. I would pick availability in squadron service around late BoB, maybe even missing it altogether. The Defiant entered service with 264 Sqn in December 1939.