The Castle Bromwich factory which historically produced Spitfires was under construction in 1937, with no Spitfires that would be a Hurricane factory, setting up production is quicker with the Hurricane and it needs fewer man hours to produce each plane. Hawkers were the only big players, they had an interest in a lot of pies, like AVRO for instance.
No Spitfire?
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The Castle Bromwich factory which historically produced Spitfires was under construction in 1937, with no Spitfires that would be a Hurricane factory, setting up production is quicker with the Hurricane and it needs fewer man hours to produce each plane. Hawkers were the only big players, they had an interest in a lot of pies, like AVRO for instance.
For a little bit of insight into the handling of the Defiant, our friend Eric Brown evaluated the Defiant a couple of times during its career and professed to admiring its handling, saying this: "The Defiant was quite roomy and well laid out, but the view ahead was not good on the ground. An interesting feature was that the control column was mounted on the pilot's adjustable seat frame, so that its relative position was constant whatever the position of the seat."
"The Defiant exhibited good stability characteristics, very suitable for a night fighter. In cruising flight this positive stability was accompanied by good harmony of the controls, which were all moderately light and effective, though not up to the standard of the Hurricane."
Brown carried out trials on behalf of the Admiralty for the design of the BP P.103 proposed naval fighter, which was to have a long stroke undercarriage, and this was fitted to a Defiant. He states that the Defiant had little or no warning approaching the stall and that its stall characteristics overall were undesirable. Despite this, he passed the aircraft as fit for carrier trials, claiming that in the approach and flare it was stable and could have been landed on a carrier with ease. Unfortunately, he didn't carry this out in practice, as far as I know, no mention in his book as doing so, but the P.103 wasn't progressed with anyway. He ends with the following:
"The Defiant will never be remembered as a great operational aeroplane, but it deserves to be remembered as an aircraft with almost no flying vices."
"The Defiant exhibited good stability characteristics, very suitable for a night fighter. In cruising flight this positive stability was accompanied by good harmony of the controls, which were all moderately light and effective, though not up to the standard of the Hurricane."
Brown carried out trials on behalf of the Admiralty for the design of the BP P.103 proposed naval fighter, which was to have a long stroke undercarriage, and this was fitted to a Defiant. He states that the Defiant had little or no warning approaching the stall and that its stall characteristics overall were undesirable. Despite this, he passed the aircraft as fit for carrier trials, claiming that in the approach and flare it was stable and could have been landed on a carrier with ease. Unfortunately, he didn't carry this out in practice, as far as I know, no mention in his book as doing so, but the P.103 wasn't progressed with anyway. He ends with the following:
"The Defiant will never be remembered as a great operational aeroplane, but it deserves to be remembered as an aircraft with almost no flying vices."
Not being very good at the job and being almost impossible for 50% of the crew to get out of would be vices in my book.
Bristol, Fairey and Handley Page have entered the chat and would like a word... Castle Bromwich was a Vickers factory, Vickers are not gonna build other people's aeroplanes. Vickers, as I said earlier was the largest arms manufacturer in the UK, much bigger than the Hawker group. In saying that, during the war was a different story, CB had Lancasters under production there.
Avro were not actually that big in the 1930s. By the mid-1930s, the only mass-produced aeroplane it had was the Anson and at that time production was only just being undertaken. Even by that time it was an old design - based on the Fokker F.VIIb of more than ten years earlier but with hand-cranked retractable gear - no hydraulic undercarriage and flaps in the old Anson. Prior to the Anson, the company's primary contribution to the RAF was single-engined training aircraft, the Avro 504 and Tutor family, which weren't exactly state of the art, nor were they produced in large numbers (by later standards). Avro's first experience with all-metal structure was building Bristol Blenheims under licence at Chadderton (and Woodford - sorry), which gave its workforce valuable knowledge and experience, something that is very rarely acknowledged in histories of the company, so going from building a ten-year-old structural design to designing and putting the thoroughly modern Manchester into production was a huge undertaking for what was essentially a small-time company. Avro had good facilities and was ripe for mass production, but it was the Blenheim that was its first thoroughly modern mass-produced aeroplane, not an Avro aircraft.
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The Hurricane was at or near the end of its development, and would have been ineffective against later German aircraft, regardless of the numbers put up. Britain would have fairly quickly run out of pilots.
I disagree for the Battle of Britain period, with many more Hurricanes earlier you have more pilots, squadrons in 11 and 12 group based on 20 not 12 aircraft. The Spitfire was superior to the Hurricane but not so much that quantity didn't have a quality of its own, 303 Squadron showed what it could do.
Intercept and shoot down German bombers.What job are you asking it to do?
It did that really well. I can dig out the figures if you like to prove it. It was against single-seat fighter opposition that it didn't so well.
But, what about later? into 42/43?
I am coming to that, my magnificent plans for complete and utter world domination will be revealed in good time
This is definitely true, the Hurri was the most numerous fighter in Fighter Command in 1940 and it was an excellent low-speed dogfighter, so lodged impressive kill numbers, but with the appearance of the Bf 109F in numbers in mid-1941, against which it was no match. The Fw 190 was far superior, even to the Spitfire V. Gumbyk is right in that the Hurricane had limited frontline appeal in Europe after 1940.
I don't think it did it really well, hard to say with so few in service, but if Hurricanes and Spitfires had a problem getting "bounced" in actions over England then the Defiant would have fared worse, since it was already made they had to do something with it, I don't see why it was ever placed anywhere other than Scotland and North England after the fall of France doing the job it was designed for, but it was.
Be careful, I am sitting here beneath my aquadome stroking a white cat, previously undreamed of forces may be unleashed.oh oh... does this mean the Griffon engined Hurricane?
Cue evil laugh...Muhuhuhahahahaaaa....
Yup, precisely, couldn't agree more, pbehn. I guess the answer was that Dowding wanted to maintain an effective number of squadrons and felt before the Battle of Britain that he had too few, so Defiant, Blenheim, and Gladiator Squadrons were counted. Arguably, however, the Defiant should not have been placed in roles that single-seaters were doing, such as convoy escort, standing patrols, and intruder raids against ground targets on the continent. It was designed as a bomber destroyer to work with single-seaters against unescorted bombing raids from mainland Germany. How things changed as the war progressed.
There were only two Daffy day fighter squadrons during the Battle of Britain though and one of those bowed out pretty quickly in July 1940, so 264 was essentially the only Defiant squadron active until it was withdrawn north at the end of August. From then when there were none active, in mid-September, 307 Squadron became the first Defiant night fighter squadron when it equipped with the type. It only flew a few sorties until the end of the BoB. The Poles hated it though, since pilots felt they shouldn't be ferrying around gunners!
The surviving Defiant at Cosford is in 307 Sqn markings.
With the "Hurricane tap" turned onto full by the fall of France the numbers of Hurricanes to Spitfires in squadron service was almost identical at 250 per type. The superior numbers in service and kills noted during the BoB were purely due to its production numbers during the battle itself. Dowding and Park only had 500 fighters at the start of the BoB. If that was 1000 you can use completely different tactics. Instead of calling on 12 group to protect 11 group airfields, they protect their own most go to the attack as directed some remain waiting to bounce any raiders who get through, so 12 group can also train more pilots. Also use the tactics of J Frantisek, bounce the L/W as it tries to withdraw.
I think some of the actions were involving shipping protection, a turret fighter may seem like a good idea for such a mission, circling above with a turret like a portable flak ship, in reality it wasn't.
Definitely agree. The Hurri was the mainstay of FC at the time. The argument of 12 Group and what Frantisek advocated was a good one, if only 12 Group were indeed doing that in numbers, as that was the subject of a disagreement that Park and Leigh Mallory had. Park of course argued that Mallory's squadrons weren't getting German aircraft at all because it was taking too long for the Big Wing to formate. There's a great wee scene in the Battle of Britain film that dramatises this debate, although in this format its entirely fictional since the discussion was held across multiple meetings:
RAF Generals Park, Mallory and Dowding Argue in "Battle Of Britain" - YouTube
As for a turret fighter, it's just not a good idea in hindsight, but you go to war with what you've got and they couldn't very well leave them on the ground when what was needed was fighters.
Shortround6
Major General
A large part of the Spitfires success and a large problem with trying to replace it with anything else that was on the drawing boards was that Mitchell and his team made the inspired guess to use the thin section wing. There was little or no hard data in England at the time to either support this or counter it. Just about everything else the British were designing used much thicker wing sections and the RAE had not yet figured out that there was a severe rise in drag at higher airspeeds (mid 300mph and up) which meant that many British designs ran into a wall and speed estimates were hopelessly optimistic.
Now in a "what if" we can postulate that another design team also selects a thin section wing but then we are dealing with a plane that never even existed on paper at the time.
Any design of the time using a thick section wing and using the Merlin engine of the time is going to be between the Hurricane and Spitfire in performance and probably closer to the Hurricane than the Spitfire.
Single seat Daffy has been gone over many times.
Basically we are supposed to believe that by removing the turret from the Daffy II (Merlin XX engine) the plane is supposed to go 30-40mph faster than the regular Daffy II when the
Prototype Daffy I showed no such difference in speed with and without turret.
Larger radiator and oil cooler on the Daffy II killed some of the anticipated improvement in speed.
I don't know if this was accounted for in the speed estimate for the single seat Daffy P.94
The P.94 Daffy was getting into the speed range at which the British were having a lot of trouble with accurate estimates.
Now in a "what if" we can postulate that another design team also selects a thin section wing but then we are dealing with a plane that never even existed on paper at the time.
Any design of the time using a thick section wing and using the Merlin engine of the time is going to be between the Hurricane and Spitfire in performance and probably closer to the Hurricane than the Spitfire.
Single seat Daffy has been gone over many times.
Basically we are supposed to believe that by removing the turret from the Daffy II (Merlin XX engine) the plane is supposed to go 30-40mph faster than the regular Daffy II when the
Prototype Daffy I showed no such difference in speed with and without turret.
Larger radiator and oil cooler on the Daffy II killed some of the anticipated improvement in speed.
I don't know if this was accounted for in the speed estimate for the single seat Daffy P.94
The P.94 Daffy was getting into the speed range at which the British were having a lot of trouble with accurate estimates.
