The Hawker Hurricane Prototype Makes Its First Flight

A Fighter to an Air Ministry Specification

The Hurricane was designed by Sydney Camm at the Hawker Aircraft Company in Kingston upon Thames. It was built to Air Ministry specification F.36/34, which called for a modern single-seat fighter with eight machine guns. Camm's earlier biplane fighters, such as the Fury, were the starting point. The design combined a monoplane wing, a retractable undercarriage and an enclosed cockpit with a structure of metal tubes covered with fabric, a method Hawker already knew well.

The First Flight

The prototype, serial number K5083, was taken from Kingston to Brooklands aerodrome near Weybridge in Surrey for final assembly. It was powered by a Rolls-Royce Merlin C engine. Hawker's chief test pilot, Paul Ward Spencer Bulman, known as George, flew it for the first time on November 6, 1935. Test flying continued through the winter, and by March 1936 the aircraft had completed about ten hours in the air.

Production and Service

In June 1936 the Air Ministry ordered 600 Hurricanes, before the prototype's testing was finished. The first production aircraft flew in October 1937, and No. 111 Squadron at Northolt received the first Hurricanes for the Royal Air Force in December 1937. The aircraft was built by Hawker and by other companies, including Gloster, and also in Canada. Production totalled more than 14,000 aircraft. The Supermarine Spitfire, another monoplane fighter with a Merlin engine, made its first flight in March 1936.

The Hurricane in the War

At the start of the Second World War the Hurricane equipped most of the RAF's modern fighter squadrons. In the Battle of Britain in the summer and autumn of 1940, Fighter Command flew more Hurricanes than Spitfires, and Hurricane squadrons are credited with a majority of the German aircraft shot down in that battle. The type served in France, the Mediterranean, North Africa and Burma, and was used from ships as well as from land. Later versions carried cannon, bombs and rockets for ground attack.

Specifications and Later Versions

The Hurricane Mk I had a top speed of about 510 kilometers per hour, or 320 miles per hour, and carried eight .303-inch Browning machine guns in its wings. The first production aircraft had a fixed-pitch wooden propeller, which was replaced in 1940 by a constant-speed metal propeller. The Mk II, which appeared in 1940, had a more powerful Merlin engine and, in some versions, twelve machine guns or four 20-millimeter cannon. About 1,450 Hurricanes were built in Canada. Some Hurricanes were fitted for naval use as Sea Hurricanes, and from 1941 a small number of Hurricanes were launched by catapult from merchant ships to defend convoys against long-range German aircraft.