Why did the British airforce adopted highly similar Hurricane and Spitfire at the same time?

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Admiral Beez said:
I was more thinking the all metal skin, a first for Hawker with their Typhoon was a further leap between the canvas on frame Fury and Hurricane. I wonder what Hawker would have made with a Merlin on an all-metal airframe spec?
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A Hawkers metal skin fighter with Merlin would probably have been a Hurricane with a metal skin. That was probably the best of their aerodynamic knowledge at the time.
 

I was more thinking of the earlier stage of Hurricane development, where these engines didn't exist, even on paper.

The Napier Sabre program started around the time of the Hurricane's first flight, the Vulture a few months before.
 
Admiral Beez said:
I was more thinking the all metal skin, a first for Hawker with their Typhoon was a further leap between the canvas on frame Fury and Hurricane. I wonder what Hawker would have made with a Merlin on an all-metal airframe spec?
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A bit too much is being made of the the metal skin, metal skin is not always monocoque.
The Martin Baker MB 5 was steel tube with metal skin hung on it.

And please knock it off with canvas. Nobody ever used canvas on an airplane. Ever.
Put canvas on an airplane and you will add a crap load of weight.
 
Regarding the notion that the Hurricane was a "stop-gap" for the Typhoon:


Hawker Typhoon

Fighter and heavily-armed ground attack aircraft designed around the Napier Sabre engine.
www.baesystems.com

That is, Camm was scheming designs that would become the Typhoon only after the Hurricane was being put into production, and just 7 months before the first production Hurricane flew.

The Vulture was nearing its first run, and the Sabre was still a year away, but work on the prototype was underway.

Regarding construction:

 
Excellent discussion on the evolution of types. I'm looking at what was being produced, and the constant changing / updating of requirements (always in search of more: power, speed, range, firepower) and thinking that almost all were stopgaps. Today we are flying F-15Cs that were made in the 1978-1986 timeframe but should have been replaced by F-22s in the 90s. Stopgap or overcome by newer tech? End of lifespan or planned obsolescence? The Eagle replacement was stopped by budget constraints, and not even fully replaced, more along the lines of supplanted. In WW2 planes were either quickly replaced by new ones (or they tried to replace them) or supplanted by "improved" models (anything that flew with a Merlin, US alphabet soup A, B, C, etc, or the Brits with Marks).

However, as far as "stop gap" or interim goes what would you define as stop gap?
 
Thumpalumpacus said:
I can see the familial resemblance between the Fury and the Hurri, but the differences are huge.
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Me too. But rather than similarity of fabric on frame appearance or shared components (of which there are none), the question is if there's any production methods or knowledge that can go between the Fury and Hurricane that make the latter an evolutionary next step for Hawker. Akin to Grumman going from F3F to F4F Wildcat rather than straight from F2F to F6F Hellcat.
 

Did they have any intervening production where they learned to manufacture retractable gear?

Of course there's some evolution going on, but the Hurricane per force had to be very different, such that it simply could not be a "monoplane Fury", which is what was claimed.
 
in the 30s it was very common to begin design work or discussions on the next design when the "current new" aircraft entered squadron service with 1st squadron or two, any delays might mean discussions started just before service.

It also helps to see what else was going on in a company. Grumman did not build just fighters. They had an amphibian float plane in production(old), A small twin engine flying boat (the Goose 1937) and it's smaller brother the Widgeon (1940) and were working on the TBF starting in 1939. They had barely taken the top wing off the XF4F-1 at that point

How much of anything crossed over I don't know but obviously Grumman was used to working on different projects with different challenges and was working with new materials. 1939 Aluminum was not the same as 1932 Aluminum. Aluminum before WW I was close to solidified dirt. A pure aluminum beam was lucky it could hold itself up and if unsupported it had a hard time doing that. It needed alloying and heat treatment. In the early 30s aluminum had only been used for structures of any sort for less than 20 years.
As side note the landing gear on the F6F followed a Boeing patent that Boeing never used in one of their own aircraft. It was also used by Curtiss with the Hawk 75 and newer and was used by Vaught in the F4U. Everything didn't have to be developed in house.
 
The only canvas used in aircraft was the seats in some early WW1 acft and the C-47 Troopcarrier seats. Nitrocellulose dope was used on fabric covered control surfaces as well as PT-17s and CG-4s. In 1958 I assisted in the recovering/restoring of a Taylorcraft L-2 and the dope smelled the same as model airplane dope. The dope on the L-2 I now believe was the same as todays low shrink dope by Randolph. I learned how to rib stich, but today couldn't tell you how. Sorry for the rant, but "canvas covered" is one of my buttons, especially when used by any noted author.
 
Thumpalumpacus said:
Did they have any intervening production where they learned to manufacture retractable gear?
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I don't think so. The Hurricane has some firsts for Hawker, with its wing design, including its retractable undercarriage being a big move forward for the firm. Thankfully Hawker didn't look to its recently acquired Gloster subsidiary and its F5/34 for undercarriage ideas.
 
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BiffF15 said:
However, as far as "stop gap" or interim goes what would you define as stop gap?
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I see a stop-gap as something that is quickly built to fill in for a more advanced project which will take longer to get into service.

An example fro Spitfire production would be Spitfire Mks VII/VIII and IX.

VII and VIII were designed to take the 60-series Merlins, and had some upgrades for the airframe, such as retractable tail landing gear, as well as additional tanks in the wing leading edge.

But the immediate need to combat the Fw 190A meant a short term solution was needed - so the IX was created. The IX was, basically, the V with the 60-series Merlin installed. There were fewer changes required to get it into production, so it became available about a year earlier than the VIII.


Same thing happened with the Spitfire XIV and 21. The 21 had the new, strengthened, wing was supposed to be the Griffon Spitfire. But the work required to get that into production, was taking too long, so the interim Spitfire XIV was created, using the VIII as a basis.

Naturally, the interim/stop-gap IX and XIV were produced in greater numbers than the VIII and 20-series Spitfires respectively.
 
Thumpalumpacus said:
Right, and that's why I made my post so.
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Ah. I perceived your question as one of genuine inquiry and interest rather than rhetorical. Hawker did try to make good use of its investment in the Hurricane's wing, using variations of it in the Henley and one-off Hotspur.

I wonder if any design ideas from the Hurricane also found their way into the Defiant's undercarriage, with the Dowty Group providing suspension components for both its own Bolton-Paul aircraft and Hawker's.



EDIT: looks like not. The Defiant's strut is directly above the wheel, with the axle seemingly held on both sides, unless the side wheel cover is just floating on the outside wheel face. Whereas the Hurricane's wheel is to the side of the single sided strut. There also seems like a lot less shock absorption on the Hurricane, which makes sense due to its lighter weight.

 
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