Thread by @hilbrandie

80 years ago #OTD, the #BattleofBritain began.

A great moment to finally answer that famous question: which @RoyalAirForce fighter was better: the Hawker Hurricane, or the Supermarine Spitfire?

#Military #History #AvGeek

First of all: back in 1940, before the #BattleOfBritain, they already tried to answer this question in a mock battle between two squadrons of Hurricanes and Spitfires. The outcome was... undecided.

And pilots who flew both planes, praised them both. So that's utterly useless.

Just like the lavish praise of the Luftwaffe for the Spitfire was useless; that was just German propaganda.

To obscure the fact that their modern Messerschmitts Bf 109's were being downed by wood-and-linen Hurricanes, they deflected attention to the sleek, all-metal Spitfire.

So, let's look at the facts: the Spitfire’s and Hurricane's performance.

The Hurricane could make shorter turns and was a better gun platform (better sight, better guns, more stable), but the Spitfire was more manoeuvrable, faster and had a higher rate of climb.

This meant the Spitfire was more suited to counter German fighters like the Messerschmitt Bf 109 since dogfights required lots of manoeuvring, and the Hurricane was better at downing German bombers like the Heinkel 111 and Junkers 88 which required more hits.

In the Battle of Britain, the Hurricane scored some 2/3 of all kills. Much more than the Spitfire. Then again, the RAF deployed almost twice as much Hurricanes as Spitfires, and the average number of kills per Spitfire squadron was much higher than it was per Hurricane squadron.

So yeah, the Spitfire was probably a better dogfighter. But there's more to war than fighting. Costs, maintenance time, endurance, etc. In other words: the ability to actually deploy units.

This is where you can see huge differences between “commander-units” and “crew units.”

Crew Units perform superior in a fight, so that’s the kind of unit a crew wants, to win or survive.

But they're expensive, require expert crews, and need lots of maintenance. There are never quite enough of them battle-ready. Think the nigh unbeatable Tiger-tank, or F22 Raptor.

Commander Units perform mediocre, so they’re not necessarily what the soldiers prefer.

But they're cheap, anyone can operate them, and work even when half broken. So they're the commander's favourite, because they're always in huge supply. Think Sherman-tank, or MiG 21.

And that’s the funny thing in the Hurricane versus Spitfire match:

The Spitfire is a crew unit. Pilots love it, but they’re expensive, take a long time to build, repair and bring back in the air between flights, and require lots of maintenance.

The Hurricane is cheaper and faster to build, is back up in the air after a 9 minute refill, still flies when riddled with bullets and bits of wing chipped off, and is repaired easily using tape, glue and linen. So it’s a commander unit…

…which is also loved by pilots, because it’s sturdy, reliable and almost as good a dogfighter as the Spitfire. So the Hurricane is both crew unit as well as commander unit.

So the Spitfire might be the superior dogfighter, but the Hurricane is the superior unit.

Does that settle it? Well, if all RAF-fighters in the #BattleofBritan had been Spitfires, the UK would have lost. The number of units in the air at any given moment would have been simply too low.

Then again… if all RAF-fighters had been Hurricanes, they would have lost too. The Hurricanes would be so busy fighting the Messerschmitt BF's, that the German bombers would have bombed at will.

And there you have it: the question whether the Spitfire or the Hurricane was the better plane in the #BattleofBritain, is nonsense.

A former Spitfire pilot said it best, long after the war:

‘I take the view that it took both of them to win the Battle of Britain, and neither would have achieved it on its own.”