Hawker Hurricane at dive

Afternoon James,

James I would not even dream of contradicting, you are undoubtedly right in saying that the build-up of fighter command for the Battle of Britain was a close run thing!

It really is quite amazing to look to look at the number of modifications carried out on the run-up to the battle. Like you I tend to accept some quoted dates with reservations!

Cheers

Eric

Interesting to hear how on the fabric winged Hurricanes the fabric ballooned so much in a dive it made the test pilot nervous and want to impose limitations. Hearing this is not surprising, there must have been an enormous amount of negative pressure on the uppper surface of the wing. No wonder Hawkers developed the system they did for attaching the fabric.

Also of interest is how the fabric on the fuselage changes appearance. When the aircraft is stationary the photos I have shows the fabric sitting level between the stringers. Though when in flight the shadows suggest that the fabric is being pushed (sucked?) in noticeably. The plastic modelling sites have much debate on the rear fuselage fabric effect and whether it’s overdone by the “so and so” manufacturer- guess it depends on whether your model is being depicted in flight or on the ground.

True James, but certainly many of the Mk I’s that went to France in 1939 had the fabric covered wings and two bladed wooden props. By all accounts the construction of the metal covered wing was substantially different to the earlier fabric covered item.

G’day Eric,
That was a hurried reply as I headed off to the museum.

To elabourate – the Hurricane’s wing was made of three sections, centre section and two outer wings. The centre section stayed essentially the same throughout, IIRC, while the wings could be added and detached easily, the u/c and radiator etc being in the centre, only the guns in the wings proper.

Camm believed that they would not have time to develop a proper stressed skin wing and get the first Hurris into service when required – so came up with an intermediate fabric covered version – quite a complex item itself, but easier for Hawker to design and build in quantity. With that done, they then developed the full stressed skin design wing, and introduced that into production as soon as possible, and then arranged for fabric wing aircraft to have those wings swapped for the newer ones, better for the top end of the performance envelope – where we started from.

What is often forgotten is that to do all this (and get Spitfires into service in numbers) was a damn close run thing – producing the ‘new’ wing was a challenge enough, let alone producing extra numbers of wings (as well as flat-out production of new airframes) for the previously supplied Hurricanes. You can therefore see where retrospective re-fits of fabric wings would fit in, why there were fabric winged Hurricanes in France (and in the Battle of Britain – ‘Looker’s Hurricane’, at the Science Museum, was downed during the BoB and is the sole survivor with the fabric wing design) why the Finns presumably never got the scarce metal wings, and why I’m wary of statements about ‘the first xx production’ as a fixed quantity – that number of fabric winged Hurris was reduced as quickly as they could do so – but it was a major task.

All from memory, your mileage may vary.

Cheers

And retrospectively, so remaining fabric-winged Hurricanes had them replaced with metal skinned wings in service ASAP.

True James, but certainly many of the Mk I’s that went to France in 1939 had the fabric covered wings and two bladed wooden props. By all accounts the construction of the metal covered wing was substantially different to the earlier fabric covered item.

Regards

Eric

I would suspect that the replacement didn’t happen on the Finnish aeroplanes, as they were well out of the way!

However it seems at least some Hurricanes in the UK actually had the older fabric-covered wings refitted. V6742, crashed 30th April 1941 whilst on the books of 52 OTU at Debden, was fitted at the time of the crash with a set of wings built in 1937, some three years prior to the rest of the aircraft. Presumably the original wings were damaged, and there was a shortage of metal ones, but there just happened to be a handy pile of old wings lying around…
Source: Essex Aviation Group Information Book, 3rd edition.

I do declare a vested interest here – as a plane-mad 7 year old, I watched her come out of the ground and I was hooked. Still got a valve, somewhere…

Adrian

The fabric covered wings of the early Hurricane Mk I’s was a limiting factor in the performance of the aircraft (The first 500 production aircraft were fitted with fabric covered wings). The Metal covered wing was first fitted to ‘L2027′(April 1939), this wing design was fitted from 481st Hurricane Mk I on!

And retrospectively, so remaining fabric-winged Hurricanes had them replaced with metal skinned wings in service ASAP.

The fabric covered wings of the early Hurricane Mk I’s was a limiting factor in the performance of the aircraft (The first 500 production aircraft were fitted with fabric covered wings). The Metal covered wing was first fitted to ‘L2027′(April 1939), this wing design was fitted from 481st Hurricane Mk I on!

Finland received 12 Mk I airframes during 1940, shortly after it had been attacked by Russia.

WF