P-40 vs. Hurricane

[JeffK]

I havent read all 20 pages, but are we comparing the Hurricane I, in combat in 1939 1940 where it often bested the bf109E with the P-40E.

The basic P-40 (Hawk 81 first flew in Oct 1938), the Hurricane in November 1935 and only ordered into production in April 1939.

By Sept 1940, only 200 P40 were in Service, this is at the height of the Hurricane's greatest challenge, the Batle of Britain. The first combat by the RAF with P-40B (Tomahawk I) was by 112 Sqn in the Western Desert as a Fighter Bomber.

So this comparison is between Cheese Chalk, the P40 being a few years younger could take advantage of improved engines and weapons (Though I've never seen one with Rockets or a 40mm AT gun) whereas the Hurri had passed its prime and was relegated to the minor theatres. A better comparison would be against the P-36/Hawk 75, still a bit younger than the Hurri.

Someone mentioned the RAAF trials between the P40E SpitfireVc, comments included the fact the Spits paint job was rough, and took some sped off, the bloody Vokes filter handicapped the Spit and the Spit used was from 1 OTU where the trainee pilots burned the stuffings out of the engine. But the P40E/Kittyhawk Ia was a solid aircraft and RAAF USAAF pilots regulary fought Zekes Hayabusas over Darwin, Port Moresby Milne Bay with success.

 

[Wildcat]

Someone mentioned the RAAF trials between the P40E SpitfireVc, comments included the fact the Spits paint job was rough, and took some sped off, the bloody Vokes filter handicapped the Spit and the Spit used was from 1 OTU where the trainee pilots burned the stuffings out of the engine.

true, although I've read that many of the new Spitfires went to the OTU's while the front line squadrons (452,457,54RAF) kept rotating through their overhauled ones. However I agree Jeff, the air vokes filter was probably the biggest disadvantage.

 

[JeffK]

Wildcat,

Its official designation is the "Bloody Vokes Filter"

 

[Wildcat]

 

[kiwimac]

Hurricane.

I was interested to see that the Yugoslavians fitted a captured Hurri with a DB-601 engine and found that so engined, it outperformed the 109E in take-off and climb-rate and had a slightly better performance in the turn.

Source

Kiwimac

 

[Marcin T]

Personally i'll prefer Hurri , even that P40 has a better performance ( p40 was newer).

 

[pattle]

For me this is good example of how difficult it is to compare different types of ww2 aircraft. Aircraft technology was moving at such a fast pace during world war 2 that no matter how much better a new type or variant of aircraft was compared to others around at the time it was introduced that it could soon find itself bettered by another new type. With this in mind I feel there is only one real comparison to be made between these 2 aircraft and that is between the Hurricane MkII and the Tomahawk MkIIb (which was the first P40 to be produced in significant numbers). In July 1941 the Tomahawk MkIIb was the first model of P40 used by the RAF to be preferred over any Hurricane variant as a fighter, so my opinion is that up until July 1941 the Hurricane was a better fighter than the P40 but not after. Having said that the Hurricane MkII entered RAF service earlier than the P40 (September 1940) and was nearly always preferred over the P40 as a ground attack aircraft.

Looking at it again from a different angle I think in it's time the Hurricane was a better fighter compared to it's adversaries than the P40 was in it's time. In 1940 the Hurricane was probably the third best fighter in the world behind the Spitfire MkI and Me109e, but by the time a year later when the P40 finally blossomed it was up against the FW190, P38, Spitfire VB, Hawker Typhoon, Me109F and Zero. If the Americans had known they were going to need a fighter then maybe they would have developed the P40 sooner and maybe of had many more of my favourite the P38 Lightning at hand. If the Americans could of given us some Lightnings (complete with superchargers) during the Battle of Britain to use instead of Hurricanes against the ranks of German Bombers then I think the results would have been absolutely staggering.

 

[CobberKane]

I think the Lightning as a 'what if' option for the BoB would have been tricky - maintaining such a complex aircraft with production lines on the other side of the Atlantic would have been a mighty tall order. What the Brits needed were competitive indigenous designs, and that's what they got with the Hurricane and Spitfire.
With regards to the Hurricane V P40 thing, they co-served in the PTO, MTO and ETO. I understand the Russians weren't hugely impressed with either. The British apparently preferred the P40 in the desert, though this may have had something to do with availability. In the Pacific the P40 seems to have done better than the Hurricane, perhaps because it's diving speed was better and gave it at least one area of significant superiority against the Zero and Oscar.
Overall I'd go with the P 40. Maybe the Hurricane could out-turn it, but the P -40 could still out-turn any of their common opponents which the Hurricane could. The Hurricane might have been better at altitude, but at altitude they were both outperformed by their common opponents anyway. The Hurricane might have been able to out-dive a zero, but it couldn't dive with a 109, and the P-40 could. Outside the hypothetical scenario of the BoB, I think the P-40 was the better fighter. At the end of the day though, neither ever existed at a time when they weren't significantly outclassed by various enemy fighters; their tactical use often involved putting them in theatres where they hopefully wouldn't run into quality opposition - but when the opposition turned up anyway, it was the P-40 that most often outdid itself.

 

[RCAFson]

The Hurricane I could outclimb and out turn the P-40, but the P40 was faster under 25k or so, IIRC and could out dive the HH.
The Hurricane II could outclimb and out turn the P40 and was faster above 20k or so, and had a much higher ceiling. The HHII could serve as a high altitude interceptor but the P-40 would have been less successful in this role.

 

[pattle]

The p38 scenario was only really a what if type thing and you can talk about what ifs all day. I think when I wrote the P38 Battle of Britain scenario I had in mind that we needed something with a heavier punch to bring down the bombers in the Battle of Britain than the rifle calibre machine guns of the Hurricane and Spitfire of the time, which leads me to add that the first P40s were lightly armed and unlike the Hurricane of the time were not considered fit for combat in western Europe. Development mostly ended on the Hurricane in 1940 with the MkII and Hawkers moved on to the Typhoon, Curtiss on the other hand continued to develop the P40 long after 1940 first with the Tomahawk II and then with the Kittyhawk. You have to remember that the P40 Tomahawk and P40 Kittyhawk were very different aircraft, the Tomahawk having an Allison engine and the Kittyhawk having a Merlin engine in a lengthened fuselage, both aircraft having evolved from the earlier radial engined Curtiss Hawk. Tomahawks and Kittyhawks should not really be talked of as the same thing anymore than Typhoons and Tempests are. I suppose you could say that the P40 was better than the Hurricane because of it's development potential, but then again the Hurricane was based on a much earlier bi plane fuselage. The P40 was clearly the better aircraft in it's later marks due to it's development but it in its earlier marks it was inferior to the Hurricane, had the RAF had the model of P40 being produced at the time of the Battle of Britain instead of the Hurricane the battle would have been more difficult to win. From memory I think that the RAF had a number of P40s around at the time of the Battle of Britain that were originally from a French order but chose not to use them.

 

[CobberKane]

Back on topic.....

"In Italy the 325 Fighter Group, commonly know as "The Checker-Tailed Clan" amassed one of the best kill to loss ratios of any fighter group in the European Theater. With a yellow and black checkerboard adorning the tail of their P-40s (and later P-47s and P-51s), they flew many sorties against more numerous German forces, and won most of the time. In 1943 the 325th won two major engagements. On July 1, 22 checker-tailed P-40s were making a fighter sweep over southern Italy when they were jumped by 40 Bf-109s. After an intense air battle, the result was half of the German aircraft shot down for the loss of a single P-40. There was a similar situation on the 30th of July, again over Italy, when 35 Bf-109s ambushed 20 P-40s. On this occasion, 21 German fighters were shot down, again for the loss of a single P-40. Because the pilots of the 325th were trained to maximize the P-40's strengths and minimize its weaknesses, it became a lethal opponent for the German fighters. The final record of "The Checker-Tailed Clan's" P-40s was 135 Axis planes shot down (96 were Bf-109s), for only 17 P-40s lost in combat"

Great results both, but I don't think maximising the P-40s strengths alone was enough to turn it into a 'lethal' opponent for LW fighters. To get to the lethal level you would also have to rely on your opponent fighting dumb: in the encounters you mention the American pilots later noted that for some unknown reason the Germans abandoned their usual dive and zoom tactics, where they were superior to the P-40s, and instead elected to engage in turning fights, the one parameter in which the P-40 was clearly superior.
Gotta luv the P-40, a real trooper of an aircraft. But the only time it was ever going to get results like this against 109Gs or 190As is when the LW pilots negate the superiority of their aircraft with bad tactics. That said, in the right hands the P40 demonstrated many times that it was capable of very quickly turning the tables on either of those German fighters if the pilots got complacent.

 

[drgondog]

The Hurricane I could outclimb and out turn the P-40, but the P40 was faster under 25k or so, IIRC and could out dive the HH.
The Hurricane II could outclimb and out turn the P40 and was faster above 20k or so, and had a much higher ceiling. The HHII could serve as a high altitude interceptor but the P-40 would have been less successful in this role.

Pretty much true - except the comparison re: high altitude performance nearly irrelevant as the dominant envelope for both was zero (plus 10) to 15,000 feet.

 

[RCAFson]

Pretty much true - except the comparison re: high altitude performance nearly irrelevant as the dominant envelope for both was zero (plus 10) to 15,000 feet.

Over the UK 20,000ft was pretty common and over the SWP/Darwin the P40 was often forced to climb above it's comfort zone.

 

[Juha]

Over the UK 20,000ft was pretty common and over the SWP/Darwin the P40 was often forced to climb above it's comfort zone.

But IIRC did anyway fairly well.

Juha

 

[nuuumannn]

the Tomahawk having an Allison engine and the Kittyhawk having a Merlin engine in a lengthened fuselage

Actually, both the Kittyhawk and Tomahawk had Allison V-1710 engines. The only P-40s with Merlins (Packard V-1650-1s) were the P-40F and L models; the RAF did not operate either variant.

The British apparently preferred the P-40 in the desert, though this may have had something to do with availability

Not so much availability, but more to do with unsuitability for operations in Europe, although in saying that, there were Army Co-op units operating the Tomahawk in the UK in mid 1942 until superceded by the Mustang I.

 

[RCAFson]

But IIRC did anyway fairly well.

Juha

Not really:

First priority naturally went to the defense of Allied bases, a burden which fell upon the fighter units at Moresby and Darwin. Over both points the enemy bombers usually came in at 22,000 feet and above, too high for satisfactory interception by P-40's, P-39's, or P-400's, the only fighters available to the AAF in the Southwest Pacific, and their limitations seriously affected Allied operations.64 During July the P-39 had made contact with enemy bombers only four times in a series of nine raids despite a thirty-minute warning; in sixteen actual contacts it never once enjoyed an altitude advantage and the Zero invariably could outclimb and outmaneuver this fighter, which suffered the additional disadvantage of increased vulnerability because of the location of its motor behind the pilot. The P-40 was somewhat better, but it, too, was outperformed by the more nimble enemy fighters, particularly at high altitudes. Inferior performance of their planes lowered the morale of the pilots.65 It was true that the Allied planes were more rugged and less inflammable, they could outdive the Zero, and if given warning to permit them to reach sufficient altitude they could achieve creditable scores, as they did on 30 July over Darwin when twenty-seven P-40's shot down six Zeros and two bombers at the cost of one P-40.66 But pilots continued to be frustrated, as on 17 August, when for the seventy-eighth time enemy bombers struck Moresby in an attempt to disable their favorite target, Seven-Mile Airdrome. Although defending fighters had received adequate warning, they were unable to intercept.67

HyperWar: The Army Air Forces in WWII: Vol. IV--The Pacific: Guadalcanal to Saipan [Chapter 1]

 

[pattle]

Actually, both the Kittyhawk and Tomahawk had Allison V-1710 engines. The only P-40s with Merlins (Packard V-1650-1s) were the P-40F and L models; the RAF did not operate either variant.



I think it was the Kittyhawk mk2 (p40f) that had Merlin engines and was used by either the RAF, RAAF or SAAF.

 

[tomo pauk]

The 'US hundred thousand states' that no Kittyhawk II (equivalent of the P-40F) were issued to the UK; 100 went to USSR, 25 to the Free French, 81 was shipped to the USAF in North Africa, 1 to N. Zealand.

 

[CobberKane]

...1 to N. Zealand.

Which remains the high water mark of New Zealand's aerial strength to this day.

 

[pattle]

I have just spent half an hour on the net trying to get to the bottom of all this and have discovered that only a few of the merlin engined p40's reached the Commonwealth Airforces such as the one pictured in the attachment. The thing that I can't understand is why there were long and short fuselage versions of the same marks and also why the RAF gave different marks of the P40 the same designation.

The picture by the way is of a P40 from an RAAF Squadron.