Just Finished Reading: Hurricane – Victor of the Battle of Britain by Leo McKinstry (FP: 2010) [322pp] 

In the mid-1930's in was becoming increasing clear that war with Germany was coming. The question this posed, with Britain still only just recovering from the Great Depression, was what to do about it – and specifically where to spend the scarce resources in rearmament. Arguments raged, and nowhere more heatedly that in the RAF. The majority, the doctrine fundamentalists, where convinced by the long agreed upon argument that the bomber would ‘always get through’ which made beefing up air defences less than useless. A good defence, no matter how good, would never deter an attack. No, the only way to deter Germany was the building of an overwhelming bomber force that could crush its targets with a sheer weight of bombs. Luckily, for Britain's survival and for world history, other voices had the power to make themselves heard. Rather ironically, with the advantage of hindsight, one of those voices was Neville Chamberlain. Before he became Prime Minister in 1937, he was responsible for Britain’s finances and ensured that there was money (never enough but at least it existed) to build a proper fighter defence organisation headed by Hugh Dowding. But what of the fighters themselves? 

Like many other nations after the horrors of WW1 Britain had drastically cut its defence spending and especially during the dark Depression years. Home Defence in the mid-30's relied on out-of-date biplanes which could barely keep up with the new generation of light bombers never mind chase and kill them. Something clearly needed to be done and done it was. The Air Ministry sent out for proposals of single engine monoplane fighters and began sifting through applications. Fairly quickly it was decided that one design was the clear winner in all regards – the Supermarine Spitfire. Orders were placed and production of the first operation planes expected at least a year before war broke out. Whilst the Air Ministry and RAF waited, and waited, and waited some more it became clear that all was not well at Supermarine. But what could be done? Other designs had been rejected as unusable or simply unnecessary – like Hawker’s design. The simplicity of mass production really called for a single fighter design rather than introducing the increased logistical problems of having two. However, with the war drums getting louder and the Spitfires still not arriving a decision was made to start producing as many Hawker Hurricanes as soon as possible. A legend, and the backbone of Fighter Command during the pivotal Battle of Britain, was about to be born. 

I think, like many kids growing up post-war, I saw the Hurricane as a rather podgy and somewhat inelegant substitute for the much more iconic Spitfire. In many ways it was – it was slower and (generally) less maneuverable but could carry a much bigger offensive armament and could take a LOT of damage and still bring the pilot home. Without it in the fighting line its arguable that the Battle of Britain could have been lost with the faster Spitfires simply overwhelmed by the Luftwaffe. This was a very interesting read and alerted me to a whole host of facts I was completely unaware of – the early production difficulties with the Spitfires for one! The author didn’t shy away from the fact that the Hurricane was increasingly combat ineffective following the Battle of Britain – at least in a fighter role – but had a revived (even if only short lived) role as a ground attack fighter-bomber and very effective early tank buster. I shall definitely be looking out for the authors other works on other iconic aircraft. Definitely a must read for anyone interested in the Battle of Britain or fighter aircraft development.