MiTasol
1st Lieutenant
No
I have worked on both. The Hurricane has a simple fuselage made of steel tubes, squared where they join and held together with rivets bolts and gussets (instead of welded like the equivalent American and European aircraft). Over this is a set of wooden formers made of two layers of thin ply sandwiching 1/4 square stiffeners and 1/4 thich shaped sections and all covered in fabric. The whole belly fairing detaches making working inside fairly easy (except where the bracing wires get in the way - not needed on welded frames). Labour intensive woodwork that any competent woodmaker could make but the main frame is simple and easy to produce with low manhours.
The Spitfire fuselage is a nightmare with the skin riveted to the alloy frames and then hundreds of short intercostals riveted to L brackets between each of the frames and to the skin. Many many hours stuffed in a confined space riveting and then fitting internals. American aircraft used long stringers riveted to the skin before being riveted to the frames. Many were split on the centre line so that each half was made with lots of access and the only time inside was to join the half frames and one horizontal rivet line each side. Those were also designed to be wired and plumbed before the halves were joined.
Apart from the spars the Hurricane metal wing is a fairly straight forward structurefor the time with simple stamped parts. The Spitfire wing uses wood technology so each rib is made of dozens of small parts (some extrusions and many channels) held together by riveted gussets. Bulk manhours to make each rib.
P-40s and P-51s were around 4,00 to 4,500 manhours because they were designed to be easily produced.
If you are interested in some of the problems the MAP had in aircraft production read the following - both were senior members of the MAP staff.
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