Hawker Hurricane — History, Specs & Stories

Hawker Hurricane Mk I fighter in flight
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Hawker Hurricane
The workhorse of the Battle of Britain

Overshadowed by the Spitfire, yet credited with the majority of RAF victories in the summer of 1940 — a rugged, easy-to-repair fighter that carried Britain through its most dangerous hour and went on to fight in every theatre of the war.

~14,500Aircraft built · 1937–1944
~55–60%Of RAF Battle of Britain kills · commonly cited
~547 km/hTop speed · up to ~340 mph (Mk I)
1935First flight · 6 November
Photo: Royal Air Force official photographer · Public domain (IWM CM131)
RoleFighter · ground attack · night fighterEraSecond World WarEngine1 × Rolls-Royce MerlinOriginUnited Kingdom · HawkerStatusRetired (warbirds fly)Can you fly a Hurricane today?
The Story

The true workhorse of the Battle of Britain

When people picture the Battle of Britain they picture the Spitfire. But the fighter the Royal Air Force actually had most of in 1940 — and the one credited with the majority of its air-to-air victories — was the Hawker Hurricane. Designed by Sir Sydney Camm at Hawker against Air Ministry Specification F.36/34, it was a deliberately conservative aircraft: a modern monoplane wing, retractable undercarriage and the new Rolls-Royce engine wrapped around a proven, traditional airframe.

Power came from the Rolls-Royce Merlin, the V-12 that would also drive the Spitfire, Lancaster and Mustang. The prototype K5083 first flew on 6 November 1935, and the type entered RAF service in December 1937 with No. 111 Squadron — Britain’s first monoplane fighter and, in the words of the Imperial War Museum, the first RAF production aeroplane to fly at over 300 miles an hour.

Its genius was its ruggedness. The fuselage was a steel-tube Warren truss overlaid with wooden formers and skinned in doped Irish linen — “old-fashioned” by 1940, but easy to mass-produce and, crucially, easy to repair. Bullets and even cannon shells often passed clean through the fabric rear fuselage without wrecking the structure, and squadron riggers could patch battle damage on the airfield overnight. Through the attrition of 1940 that kept far more Hurricanes in the fight, day after day. It went on to serve as a “Hurribomber,” a 40mm tank-buster, a night fighter and a carrier-borne Sea Hurricane, in theatres from Malta and the Western Desert to Burma and the Arctic.

Spitfires in the Battle of Britain were down to 19 squadrons. Hurricanes, there were 32 squadrons of them.Imperial War Museum — on the RAF fighter that did most of the work
01The Hawker Hurricane versus the Spitfire: which fighter really won the Battle of Britain?

The Spitfire was faster, climbed better at altitude and got the glory. But in the summer of 1940 the Hurricane was the aircraft Fighter Command had most of — roughly 32 squadrons to the Spitfire’s 19 — and it is credited with the majority of the RAF’s air-to-air victories, a figure commonly cited at around 55–60%. The RAF Museum records that Hurricanes destroyed more enemy aircraft in the battle than all other air and ground defences combined, while the IWM notes that over half of the aircraft shot down were credited to Hurricanes rather than Spitfires.

These are RAF claims, which historically ran higher than confirmed Luftwaffe losses, so the exact percentage should be read as indicative rather than precise. The tactical division of labour helps explain it: the RAF generally sent the steady, hard-hitting Hurricanes against the bomber formations while the nimbler Spitfires took on the escorting Bf 109s. Not “better” than the Spitfire — but arguably more important to winning the battle.

Design & Engineering

What makes it special

01

A rugged airframe — and a steady gun platform

The Hurricane’s steel-tube Warren-truss frame with a fabric-covered rear fuselage was, by 1940, technically dated — yet it was exactly what a nation fighting for survival needed. It used established industrial skills so it could be built fast, it shrugged off battle damage, and shot-up machines could be patched and re-doped overnight. Its wide-track landing gear made it forgiving on rough airfields, and its steadiness made it an excellent, stable platform for concentrating eight machine guns on enemy bombers.

02

Rolls-Royce Merlin power

The Hurricane was among the first aircraft built around the Rolls-Royce Merlin, the legendary V-12 that defined British air power in the war. The Mk I’s Merlin II/III of about 1,030 hp gave it 300+ mph performance and the climb to reach incoming raids; later marks used the more powerful Merlin XX (~1,280 hp), keeping the airframe useful in ground attack and second-line roles long after it was outclassed as a front-line interceptor.

03

The most versatile fighter of the war

Few WWII aircraft were stretched into so many roles. The Hurricane became the bomb-carrying “Hurribomber” for ground attack; the 40mm tank-buster Mk IID in the North African desert; a night fighter; and, at sea, the carrier-borne Sea Hurricane and the catapult-launched “Hurricat” flown off CAM merchant ships to defend Atlantic and Arctic convoys.

02The Hawker Hurricane’s fabric-and-tube airframe: why old-fashioned construction was a wartime advantage

While the Spitfire used a modern stressed-skin aluminium structure, the Hurricane kept a Warren-truss box girder of high-tensile steel tube, braced with duralumin, overlaid with wooden formers and stringers and skinned in doped Irish linen fabric over the rear fuselage, with metal panels forward. Early wings were fabric-covered; metal-skinned wings were phased in during Mk I production. This mixed structure was easy to build with the tooling and skills British industry already had, which allowed high production when it mattered most. And it was easy to repair: rifle-calibre rounds and even cannon shells frequently passed straight through the fabric without destroying structure, so riggers could patch and re-dope damage on the airfield overnight rather than writing the aircraft off.

03The Hawker Hurricane’s many roles: Hurribomber, 40mm tank-buster and Sea Hurricane

As it was overtaken as a pure interceptor, the Hurricane was reinvented again and again. The “Hurribomber” carried bombs for ground attack across multiple theatres. In the Western Desert the Mk IID slung two Vickers 40mm Class “S” cannon to become a dedicated low-level tank-killer, first used at Bir Hakeim in June 1942 by No. 6 Squadron — nicknamed “The Flying Can Openers.” The Mk IIC served as a night fighter. At sea, the Sea Hurricane flew from carriers, and the catapult-launched “Hurricat” was fired off CAM ships on one-shot missions against Fw 200 Condors — after which the pilot had to ditch or bail out.

Technical Data

Full specifications

Baseline figures are for the Hawker Hurricane Mk I as flown in the summer of 1940: Rolls-Royce Merlin III, metal-skinned wings, constant-speed propeller and eight .303 in Brownings. Grey text gives the main differences for the Merlin XX marks — the twelve-gun Mk IIB, the cannon-armed Mk IIC and the rocket-carrying Mk IV. Hurricane figures vary between sources, partly because early Mk Is with fabric wings and two-blade propellers were far slower than the 1940 standard aircraft quoted here; where sources disagree the range is shown rather than one tidy number.

Dimensions & weights

Crew
1 (pilot)
Length
9.84 m (32 ft 3 in)
Wingspan
12.19 m (40 ft 0 in), unchanged across every land-based mark
Height
4.0 m (13 ft 1 in), tail down on the wide-track inward-retracting undercarriage
Wing area
23.92 m² (257.5 sq ft). A big, thick, generous wing — the reason the Hurricane turned well, carried heavy loads and forgave rough grass strips
Empty weight
2,308 kg (5,085 lb); Mk IIC about 2,630 kg (5,800 lb)
Loaded weight
2,994 kg (6,600 lb) fully armed and fuelled; Mk IIC about 3,480 kg (7,670 lb)
Max takeoff weight
3,080 kg (6,790 lb); Mk IIC with bombs or drop tanks up to about 3,670 kg (8,100 lb)
Internal fuel
~441 l (~97 imp gal / ~116 US gal) in two wing tanks plus a 28 imp gal reserve tank in the fuselage directly ahead of the instrument panel. That reserve tank was the aircraft’s worst feature: when it was hit it flooded the cockpit with burning fuel, and a grim number of Guinea Pig Club burn cases came out of Hurricanes. A fireproof bulkhead and self-sealing covering were retrofitted during 1940

Performance

Max speed
519 km/h (322 mph) at 5,330 m (17,500 ft), Mk I on 100-octane fuel with a constant-speed propeller. Mk IIC about 543 km/h (337 mph) at 6,700 m (22,000 ft). For comparison the Bf 109E did roughly 570 km/h (354 mph): the Hurricane was the slowest of the three main fighters over England in 1940 and could not escape a 109 that wanted to fight
Cruise speed
476 km/h (296 mph) maximum continuous cruise at 6,100 m (20,000 ft); economical cruise nearer 340 km/h (211 mph)
Rate of climb
14.1 m/s (2,780 ft/min) at sea level; about 6.5 minutes to 4,570 m (15,000 ft). With the original two-blade fixed-pitch propeller the same airframe needed roughly half again as long
Service ceiling
10,970 m (36,000 ft); above roughly 6,000 m (20,000 ft) the Mk I fell away badly against the Bf 109E, which is exactly where the escorting fighters usually were
Range
~740 km (~460 mi) on internal fuel; in practice a Fighter Command interception sortie was about an hour and a half, and pilots regularly landed with minutes of fuel left
Ferry range
~1,450 km (~900 mi) with two 44 imp gal drop tanks; Mk II with 90 imp gal tanks considerably further, at the cost of any usable combat performance
Takeoff run
370 m (1,210 ft) at normal loaded weight from firm grass. Short-field behaviour was outstanding for the period and mattered enormously on improvised strips in France, the desert and Burma
Landing run
400 m (1,310 ft) with brakes on grass. The wide-track undercarriage made the Hurricane markedly easier to land than the narrow-track Spitfire, which cut training accidents
Wing loading
125 kg/m² (25.6 lb/sq ft) at loaded weight — lower than the Spitfire and much lower than the Bf 109E, which is why a Hurricane could out-turn both

Propulsion & systems

Engine
Rolls-Royce Merlin III 27-litre (1,647 cu in) liquid-cooled supercharged V-12, driving a universal propeller shaft that would take either de Havilland or Rotol units. Mk II onward used the two-speed supercharged Merlin XX; Canadian-built aircraft used the licence-built Packard Merlin 28 or 29
Power
1,030 hp (768 kW) at 3,000 rpm at 4,950 m (16,250 ft); 1,310 hp (977 kW) at +12 lb boost on 100-octane fuel for five minutes at low level, a wartime clearance that gave the 1940 Hurricane a real step in performance. Merlin XX: 1,185 hp (884 kW)
Propeller
Three-blade constant-speed de Havilland or Rotol, 3.43 m (11 ft 3 in). The first squadron Hurricanes had a Watts two-blade fixed-pitch wooden propeller, which was a compromise at every speed: acceptable in level flight, poor on takeoff and worse in the climb. Two-pitch propellers came first, then the emergency programme of spring 1940 converted the front-line force to constant-speed units in a matter of weeks. It transformed the aircraft — several thousand feet of ceiling, a third off the time to height and a far shorter takeoff — and it was finished only just before the Battle of Britain began
Construction
Steel-tube fuselage, fabric covered and this is the central fact about the Hurricane. Sydney Camm built it in the Hawker biplane tradition: a Warren-girder frame of bolted high-tensile steel tubes, wooden formers and stringers to give it shape, and doped Irish linen over the top. It was a generation behind the Spitfire’s stressed-skin monocoque, and it cost speed. What it bought was decisive in 1940. The Hurricane needed roughly 10,300 man-hours against something like 15,200 for a Spitfire, existing factories and existing skills could build it immediately, and a damaged aircraft could be patched with fabric and dope by a squadron working party overnight instead of being sent away for a new skin panel. Cannon shells and rifle-calibre rounds frequently punched clean through the fabric rear fuselage without finding anything to detonate against. The wings were fabric-covered on early aircraft too, but metal stressed-skin wings were introduced from 1939 and were standard by the Battle of Britain
Armament
8 × 7.7 mm Browning (.303 in) machine guns with 334 rounds per gun, grouped in two tight batteries of four in the thick wing. Mk IIB: twelve .303s. Mk IIC: four 20 mm Hispano cannon. Mk IID: two 40 mm Vickers S guns. Mk IV: eight RP-3 rockets or two 40 mm guns on a universal wing
First flight
6 November 1935 prototype K5083, flown by P. W. S. “George” Bulman from Brooklands — four months before the Spitfire
Service entry
December 1937 with No. 111 Squadron at Northolt, the RAF’s first monoplane fighter, first with eight guns and first able to exceed 300 mph
Built
~14,500 (commonly given as 14,487 to 14,533) including about 1,400 built by Canadian Car and Foundry. Production ran from 1937 to 1944 at Hawker, Gloster and Austin in Britain, with a Yugoslav and a Belgian licence line before 1940
Unit cost
~GBP 4,000–5,000 (1939–40 airframe-and-engine figures, hedged: contemporary costings were quoted on different bases and rarely agree). Roughly comparable Spitfire figures run higher, and the labour gap was larger than the money gap — the point of the Hurricane was that Britain could have a great many of them, quickly
Cost per flight hour
~USD 10,000–15,000 (hedged; modern warbird operating cost, not a wartime figure). Direct fuel and oil are a small part of it. The dominant cost is the Merlin: a full overhaul runs into the high hundreds of thousands of dollars and is due every few hundred hours, and insurance, hangarage and airshow-standard maintenance on a fabric-covered airframe do the rest. Owners quote very different numbers depending on what they include
04The Hawker Hurricane’s cost: why no reliable price exists

The Hurricane was a wartime state product, built in the tens of thousands under conditions where per-unit accounting bears little resemblance to a modern flyaway price. Histories agree it was significantly cheaper to build than the Spitfire — its simpler, older construction was part of the point — but a firm, documented pound figure for a single Hurricane is not reliably recorded in credible sources. Informal figures of roughly £4,000–5,000 circulate but could not be verified and should not be taken as fact. A meaningful cost-per-flight-hour, in the modern sense, simply did not exist in 1940s military accounting. Treat any precise price attached to a Hurricane as an estimate.

Armament & payload

“Eight guns in a fabric aeroplane”: the fighter that did most of the shooting in 1940

The Hurricane carried the heaviest fighter battery in the world when it entered service in 1937, and it is the aircraft that did most of the killing in the Battle of Britain. Hurricane pilots were credited with somewhere around 55 to 60 per cent of the German aircraft destroyed by RAF fighters that summer — more than the Spitfire, and more than every other British type combined. The reasons are unglamorous and worth stating plainly: there were simply more of them, roughly 32 Hurricane squadrons against about 19 of Spitfires, and Fighter Command controllers frequently put the Hurricanes onto the bomber formations while the faster, higher-flying Spitfires went for the escorting Bf 109s. That is a division of labour, not a verdict on quality. The Hurricane was some 30 mph slower, fell away badly above 20,000 ft and was outclassed by the Bf 109E in a straight fight; what it was, was available in numbers, steady as a gun platform, able to out-turn anything it met, and repairable overnight. Everything below is the equipment that made that record.

Machine guns

Eight .303 in Browning Mk II machine guns, four in each wing, with 334 rounds per gun — about 14 seconds of continuous fire. Because the Hurricane’s wing was thick and the guns sat close inboard in two tight blocks, the fire arrived as a dense cone rather than the Spitfire’s wider spread, and the airframe was famously steady when the triggers went. Harmonisation started at 400 yd on the pre-war “Dowding spread” and was pulled in to around 250 yd during 1940 once squadrons found that concentration mattered more than area. The limitation was the round itself: rifle-calibre bullets struggled against armour and self-sealing tanks, and killing a Heinkel or a Do 17 often took a great many hits.

Cannon (Mk IIC)

Four 20 mm Hispano Mk II cannon, initially with 60-round drums and later belt-fed at about 91 rounds per gun, firing roughly 600 rounds per minute each. A one-second burst weighed more than a three-second burst of .303s, and it finally gave the Hurricane the ability to destroy an armoured aircraft, a locomotive or a coastal barge outright. The price was weight and a few miles per hour. The IIC became the most-produced mark, at roughly 4,700 aircraft, and it defined the Hurricane’s second career: night fighting, night intruding over occupied France, and ground attack everywhere from the Western Desert to Burma.

Bombs (Hurribomber)

From late 1941 the Mk IIB and IIC carried underwing racks for two 250 lb bombs, and shortly afterwards two 500 lb — a maximum load of ~1,000 lb (~450 kg), unremarkable now, substantial for a single-engined fighter then. The same racks took 44 or 90 imp gal drop tanks, so a squadron could swap radius for firepower on the day. Hurribombers flew cross-Channel “Rhubarb” sweeps against trains, shipping and airfields, and did the same work far more usefully in North Africa, Italy and Burma, where they were attacking targets that could not shoot back with a Bf 109.

Anti-tank guns (Mk IID)

Two 40 mm Vickers S guns in underwing fairings, 15 rounds each, with a pair of .303s loaded with tracer for ranging. No. 6 Squadron RAF took them into the Western Desert in mid-1942 and painted a tin-opener on the nose; they worked at Gazala, Bir Hakeim and El Alamein and later in Burma. The technique was a shallow dive from very low level onto the thinner side and rear armour of a Panzer III or IV, firing two or three ranging bursts and then the 40 mm. It was effective and it was brutally exposed: the aircraft was slow, heavy, unmanoeuvrable with the guns fitted, and flying straight and level at a hundred feet over an alerted army. Extra armour was added around the cockpit and radiator, and losses were still heavy.

Rockets (Mk IV)

The Mk IV introduced a “universal” wing that could take bombs, the 40 mm guns or eight RP-3 rocket projectiles on rails, with either 60 lb high-explosive or 25 lb solid armour-piercing heads. Rockets were cheap, needed no recoil structure and hit very hard, but they were inaccurate: dispersion was large, the trajectory dropped steeply, and hitting a tank with one took skill and luck. Postwar analysis of rocket attacks found far fewer armoured kills than were claimed at the time. Against trains, barges, trucks, bunkers and parked aircraft they were genuinely destructive, and that is where they earned their place, in Burma, Italy and the Balkans.

Naval & special fits

The Sea Hurricane Mk IB and IIC added an arrestor hook and catapult spools and flew from escort carriers, most famously on the Malta convoy Operation Pedestal in August 1942. The Mk IA needed neither, because it was never expected to land. These were the CAM-ship “Hurricats”: worn-out Hurricanes bolted to a cordite rocket catapult on the bow of an ordinary merchant ship, launched into the mid-Atlantic when a Fw 200 Condor appeared, with no deck anywhere within range. The pilot shot down the shadower if he could and then ditched or took to his parachute beside the convoy and hoped to be picked up out of the sea. Eight operational launches produced six enemy aircraft destroyed for one pilot lost. Tropicalised aircraft, meanwhile, wore the bulky Vokes desert filter under the nose, which cost several miles per hour and was worth every one of them in sand.

Three typical Hurricane fits

Day interceptor (Mk I, Battle of Britain, 1940)
Eight .303 Brownings, 334 rpg, clean wing. No external stores at all: ~441 l (~97 imp gal) internal fuel, constant-speed propeller, armoured windscreen and a pilot back-armour plate retrofitted through 1940. Scramble, climb, one or two firing passes at a bomber formation, and home — a typical sortie ran to about an hour and a half, and fuel, not ammunition, usually ended it.
Night intruder (Mk IIC, 1942–43)
Four 20 mm Hispano plus two 250 lb bombs or two 44 imp gal drop tanks. Flame-damped exhausts, matt black finish on the night-intruder aircraft, and a choice on the day between reaching further into occupied France or hitting harder when it got there. This is the fit that kept the Hurricane useful long after it had stopped being a competitive day fighter.
Desert tank-buster (Mk IID, North Africa, 1942)
Two 40 mm Vickers S guns, 15 rounds each, plus two .303s with tracer for ranging. Vokes filter, additional armour around the cockpit and the vulnerable underslung radiator, no bombs and no drop tanks. Short radius, low level, and an aircraft that handled like a loaded truck — flown by No. 6 Squadron against Rommel’s armour.

Fit was entirely mark-dependent, and the Hurricane’s long service is really the story of that flexibility. The same fuselage carried eight rifle-calibre guns over Kent in 1940, four cannon over the Channel in 1942, two 40 mm anti-tank guns over the desert and rockets over Burma in 1944. Ammunition loads, harmonisation ranges and drop-tank sizes varied between squadrons and theatres, so the figures above are representative rather than universal.

Variants

From the RAF’s first monoplane fighter to a rocket-armed ground-attack aircraft

Hurricane Mk I (1937–41)
~4,200 built. Merlin II or III, eight .303s, fabric wings on early aircraft and metal wings from 1939. This is the Battle of Britain aircraft: about 1,715 Hurricanes flew with Fighter Command during the battle, more than every other British fighter type put together, and Hurricane pilots were credited with the majority of the German aircraft the RAF destroyed. Claims on both sides were overstated, so the exact share is arguable; the numerical dominance of the type is not.
Hurricane Mk IIA / IIB / IIC (1940–44)
~7,000 built, the bulk of production. Two-speed supercharged Merlin XX and a slightly longer nose. The IIA kept eight .303s, the IIB went to twelve plus bomb racks, and the IIC (roughly 4,700 aircraft, the most-produced single mark) carried four 20 mm cannon. The IIC became the standard night fighter, night intruder and fighter-bomber once daylight air superiority over Europe had passed to other types.
Hurricane Mk IID (1942–43)
~300 built. Dedicated anti-tank aircraft with two 40 mm Vickers S guns and added armour, used by No. 6 Squadron and others in North Africa from mid-1942 and afterwards in Burma. A specialist weapon that worked where the RAF held the sky and nowhere else.
Hurricane Mk IV (1943–44)
~520 built. Merlin 24 or 27, extra armour and the universal wing, able to carry eight RP-3 rockets, two 40 mm guns, bombs or tanks. The final RAF production version, and by then a ground-attack machine outright — it fought mainly in Burma, Italy and the Balkans.
Sea Hurricane (1941–43)
~800 conversions. Mk IA catapult fighters for CAM ships, flown one-way over the Atlantic; Mk IB and IIC with arrestor hooks for escort and fleet carriers. Fleet Air Arm Sea Hurricanes provided much of the fighter cover for Operation Pedestal in August 1942, the convoy that got the tanker Ohio into Malta.
Canadian Mk X / XI / XII (1940–43)
~1,400 built. Canadian Car and Foundry at Fort William built Hurricanes with Packard-built Merlin 28 or 29 engines, in a plant whose chief engineer was Elsie MacGill — the first woman in the world to work as an aircraft designer, and the person who put the Hurricane into mass production in Canada. Many were shipped straight back across the Atlantic to the RAF.
Soviet lend-lease aircraft (1941–44)
~3,000 delivered. Nearly 3,000 Hurricanes went to the USSR, mostly by Arctic convoy, making it one of the most numerous Western types in Soviet service. Soviet pilots were blunt about its speed and often re-armed it with 20 mm ShVAK cannon and 12.7 mm Berezin guns; it nevertheless equipped regiments through the hardest period of the war, including the defence of Murmansk.

Survivors: roughly a dozen Hurricanes are airworthy worldwide today, with several more under long-term restoration to flying condition — regular fliers include the RAF Battle of Britain Memorial Flight aircraft and machines with Shuttleworth and other private operators. A further number are preserved statically in museums in Britain, Canada, Belgium and elsewhere, among them airframes with genuine Battle of Britain combat histories, and others rebuilt around wreckage recovered from Russia and from crash sites in Britain. Production totals in this section are rounded and vary between sources, particularly where airframes were rebuilt or converted between marks and counted twice.

Timeline

From drawing board to last of the many

1934–35

Camm’s monoplane

Sydney Camm designs the Hurricane at Hawker against Air Ministry Specification F.36/34, wrapping a modern wing and the new Rolls-Royce engine around a proven airframe.

1935

First flight

Prototype K5083 first flies at Brooklands on 6 November, with Hawker test pilot P.W.S. “George” Bulman at the controls.

1937

Enters RAF service

Joins No. 111 Squadron at Northolt in December — Britain’s first monoplane fighter and first RAF aircraft to exceed 300 mph.

1940

The Battle of Britain

With about 32 squadrons to the Spitfire’s 19, Hurricanes form the backbone of Fighter Command and are credited with the majority of RAF victories.

1941

To sea and to Russia

The Sea Hurricane and catapult-launched “Hurricat” defend convoys; No. 151 Wing RAF demonstrates Lend-Lease Hurricanes at Murmansk.

1942

Tank-buster in the desert

The 40mm Mk IID enters combat at Bir Hakeim with No. 6 Squadron, hunting German armour at low level in the Western Desert.

1944

Last of the many

Production ends after roughly 14,500 aircraft; Hurricanes still fly close-support sorties in Burma at Imphal and Kohima.

1947 – today

Retirement and survival

Withdrawn from front-line RAF service in 1947. A handful remain airworthy, notably two with the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.

Stories & Eyewitnesses

From the cockpit: twelve Hurricane stories

Battle of Britain

The real winner wasn’t the Spitfire

The unglamorous Hurricane shot down more of the Luftwaffe than everything else combined.

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During the Battle of Britain the Hurricane, not the Spitfire, was Fighter Command’s backbone — roughly 32 squadrons to the Spitfire’s 19. Hurricane pilots are credited with the majority of RAF air-to-air victories, commonly cited at around 55–60%. Steadier as a gun platform and sent mainly against the bomber streams while Spitfires engaged the Bf 109 escorts, the Hurricane accounted for more enemy aircraft than all other British air and ground defences combined. The Spitfire got the glory; the Hurricane got the results.
Engineering

Patched overnight, back by dawn

The Hurricane’s old-fashioned fabric skin was a secret combat advantage.

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Unlike the all-metal Spitfire, the Hurricane used a steel-tube framework with a fabric-covered rear fuselage. The payoff was maintenance: bullets and even cannon shells often passed clean through the fabric without shattering structure, and squadron riggers could patch and re-dope battle damage on the airfield overnight rather than shipping the airframe to a factory. Through the brutal attrition of 1940 that kept far more Hurricanes serviceable, day after day — a quiet advantage that mattered as much as speed.
1940

The legless ace and his Canadian squadron

He had lost both legs in 1931, yet led 242 Squadron’s Hurricanes into the Big Wing.

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Douglas Bader lost both legs in a 1931 aerobatic crash, yet flew combat on tin legs. On 28 June 1940 he took command of No. 242 Squadron, a mostly Canadian Hurricane unit mauled in France, and rebuilt its morale through the Battle of Britain. Bader became the leading advocate of the “Big Wing,” massing squadrons to hit Luftwaffe formations en masse. Credited with over 20 victories, he was shot down and captured over France in August 1941 and later held at Colditz.
Convoy defence

One shot, no runway home

Merchant ships rocket-launched a single Hurricane — then the pilot ditched in the sea.

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Catapult Aircraft Merchant (CAM) ships carried one expendable “Hurricat,” fired off a rocket rail to intercept German raiders far out at sea. With no deck to return to, the pilot had to bail out or ditch alongside the convoy and hope to be picked up. In early August 1941, Lt R.W.H. Everett RNVR launched and shot down a Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor, winning the DSO; ditching, his radiator hit the water so hard he was dragged some 30 feet under before escaping. Others were less lucky.
Malta

Flying reinforcements to a besieged island

Carriers dashed into the Mediterranean to launch Hurricanes onto embattled Malta.

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With Malta under siege and desperate for fighters, the RAF flew Hurricanes off carriers within range of the island. The first run, Operation Hurry, launched twelve Hurricanes from HMS Argus south-west of Sardinia on 2 August 1940; all twelve reached Malta, where the pilots learned on arrival they now formed the new No. 261 Squadron. It was the first of many carrier ferry operations that kept Malta’s fighter defence alive through 1940–42.
North Africa

The Flying Can Openers

Two 40mm cannon turned the Hurricane into a low-level tank killer over the desert.

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In the Western Desert the RAF slung a pair of Vickers 40mm Class “S” cannon under the Hurricane Mk IID, creating a dedicated anti-armour aircraft. No. 6 Squadron pioneered the type; its first combat use came at Bir Hakeim, Libya, in June 1942, and it went on to hammer German armour at El Alamein and around Mareth through 1942–43. The squadron’s tank-killing role earned it the enduring nickname “The Flying Can Openers.” Success depended on nerveless low-level attacks and sharp tank recognition.
1940

126 kills in 42 days

Britain doubted them; then the Poles became the top-scoring squadron of the battle.

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Manned by Polish veterans who had already fought the Luftwaffe over their homeland, No. 303 Squadron became operational on 31 August 1940, flying Hurricanes from RAF Northolt. In just 42 days it claimed 126 enemy aircraft — the highest tally of any Fighter Command unit in the battle. Its guns were harmonised to converge at 200 yards, half the RAF standard, so pilots attacked at point-blank range. The Czech ace Josef Frantisek scored 17 victories with them. (126 is the officially credited claim total; some later historians revise it.)
At sea

First blood from a merchant ship’s deck

A one-way catapult, no way home, and the first kill of the CAM-ship war.

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To counter Fw 200 Condors preying on convoys, the Fleet Air Arm fitted Hurricanes with arrestor hooks (Mk IB, for carriers) and catapult spools (Mk IA, for CAM ships). In early August 1941, Lt Robert Everett — winner of the 1929 Grand National — was catapulted from a CAM ship and shot down a Condor, the first kill by a catapult-launched fighter, then ditched in the Atlantic and was rescued, earning the DSO. Sea Hurricanes later helped defend the Malta convoy Operation Pedestal in August 1942.
Burma

The Hurribomber in the forgotten war

Written off in Europe, the Hurricane found a brutal second life over Burma.

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In the “forgotten war” against Japan, Hurricanes brought from the Middle East soldiered on long after being eclipsed in Europe. Reasonably matched against the Nakajima Ki-43 “Oscar,” they increasingly became “Hurribombers,” each carrying two 250 lb bombs against Japanese troops, vehicles, bridges and railways for the 14th Army. During the decisive 1944 battles of Imphal and Kohima they flew constant close-support sorties that helped turn the campaign.
Lend-Lease

The RAF wing that trained Stalin’s pilots

Four Britons became the first foreigners ever to receive the Order of Lenin.

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In autumn 1941, No. 151 Wing RAF — squadrons 81 and 134 under Wing Commander Henry Ramsbottom-Isherwood — sailed to defend the Arctic port of Murmansk. Flying Hurricane IIBs from Vaenga, the wing scored its first kill on 12 September 1941 when Flt Sgt Charlton Haw downed a Bf 109, and destroyed at least a dozen aircraft. The RAF then handed its Hurricanes to the Soviets and trained their pilots. In 1942 four of its airmen became the first foreigners to receive the Order of Lenin.
1938

“Downwind” Gillan — 408 mph in the dark

The RAF’s first 300 mph monoplane fighter set a record its own pilot laughed off.

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The Hurricane entered service with No. 111 Squadron at Northolt in late 1937 — the RAF’s first monoplane fighter and first fighter to exceed 300 mph. To showcase it, squadron commander Sqn Ldr John Gillan flew from Turnhouse near Edinburgh to Northolt on the night of 10 February 1938, covering 327 miles in 48 minutes at an average of 408.75 mph. A powerful tailwind had helped, earning him the wry nickname “Downwind Gillan.” He was killed in action in August 1941.
Survivors

“The Last of the Many” still flies

The very last Hurricane ever built flies on, beside a stablemate that rose from its own ashes.

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The RAF Battle of Britain Memorial Flight keeps two Hurricanes airworthy at RAF Coningsby. PZ865, “The Last of the Many,” was the final Hurricane built, first flying on 22 July 1944 at Langley; kept by Hawker, it later raced and appeared in the 1968 film Battle of Britain before being gifted to the RAF in 1972. Its stablemate LF363 crashed and burned at RAF Wittering in September 1991; the pilot survived and, after a long rebuild, it flew again in 1998.
Gallery

The Hurricane in pictures

An airworthy Hawker Hurricane Mk I, R4118, a genuine Battle of Britain veteran, in flight.
An airworthy Hawker Hurricane Mk I, R4118, a genuine Battle of Britain veteran, in flight.Photo: Adrian Pingstone · Public domain
WAAF armourers and mechanics servicing a Hurricane in 1943 the type was famously easy to repair.
WAAF armourers and mechanics servicing a Hurricane in 1943 — the type was famously easy to repair.Photo: RAF official photographer · Public domain (IWM CH10090)
Hurricane LF363 of the RAF Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, still flying today.
Hurricane LF363 of the RAF Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, still flying today.Photo: Tony Hisgett · CC BY 2.0
A cannon-armed Hurricane Mk IIC, LF686, preserved at the Smithsonian.
A cannon-armed Hurricane Mk IIC, LF686, preserved at the Smithsonian.Photo: BrayLockBoy · CC BY-SA 4.0
A Hurricane warbird in Finnish Air Force markings Finland was one of many foreign operators.
A Hurricane warbird in Finnish Air Force markings — Finland was one of many foreign operators.Photo: Peng Chen · CC BY-SA 2.0
A Canadian-built Hurricane XII preserved at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum.
A Canadian-built Hurricane XII preserved at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum.Photo: JustSomePics · CC0
Watch

The Hurricane in motion

A hand-picked film of the Hawker Hurricane in flight is coming soon to this exhibit. In the meantime, explore the gallery above and the twelve stories from the cockpit.

Operations

Where the Hurricane flew

Combat Record

The record that defines it

The Hurricane’s reputation rests on one summer above all — 1940 — when it was the fighter the RAF had most of and did most of the fighting with. Beyond the Battle of Britain it fought in almost every theatre of the war, as fighter, ground-attack aircraft, tank-buster and convoy defender. The exact Battle of Britain kill share is best hedged: these are RAF claims, which ran higher than confirmed Luftwaffe losses.

MajorityOf RAF Battle of Britain kills — commonly cited ~55–60%
~32 vs 19Hurricane vs Spitfire squadrons, September 1940
~2,900+Supplied to the USSR by Lend-Lease

Compare the combat record of every military aircraft. Figures as of July 2026.

Questions & Answers

Everything people ask about the Hawker Hurricane

Can I fly in a Hurricane?
No — the Hurricane is not available for public flights. Only a handful of airworthy examples survive worldwide, most famously the two flown by the RAF Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, and they appear at airshows and commemorations only. You can, however, fly in several genuine military jets today — see migflug.com/flights-prices/.
How many Hurricanes were built?
Approximately 14,500, with 14,487 the most frequently cited precise figure (credible tallies range from about 14,233 to 14,503 depending on the cut-off date). They were built by Hawker, Gloster and Austin in Britain and by Canadian Car & Foundry in Canada from 1937 to 1944.
Was the Hurricane better than the Spitfire?
It depends what you mean. The Spitfire was faster and climbed better at altitude, and it got the glory. But in the Battle of Britain the Hurricane was the true workhorse — more numerous (about 32 vs 19 squadrons) and credited with the majority of RAF victories (commonly cited ~55–60%, though these are RAF claims and should be hedged). It was also tougher and easier to build and repair. Not “better,” but arguably more important to winning the battle.
What was the Hurricane made of?
A traditional mixed structure: a Warren-truss frame of high-tensile steel tube braced with duralumin, with wooden formers and stringers and a doped Irish linen fabric skin over the rear fuselage (metal panels forward). Early wings were fabric-covered; metal-skinned wings came in during production.
Did the Hurricane serve outside Britain?
Extensively. Beyond the RAF it served with the Soviet Union (the largest foreign user, ~2,900+ via Lend-Lease), Canada, Australia, India, South Africa, Portugal, Ireland, Finland, Yugoslavia, Romania and others, in theatres from North Africa and Malta to Burma and the Arctic.
What guns did the Hurricane carry?
The Mk I carried eight 0.303 in Browning machine guns, four in each wing. Later variants carried heavier armament: four 20 mm Hispano cannon (Mk IIC), or two 40 mm Vickers “S” anti-tank cannon (Mk IID), and some carried bombs or rockets.
Is any Hurricane still flying?
Yes — a small number remain airworthy, most notably two with the RAF Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (PZ865 and LF363), plus a few privately owned warbirds. There are no public passenger flights.
What replaced the Hurricane?
In the front-line fighter role it was superseded by the Spitfire and, for ground attack, by aircraft such as the Hawker Typhoon. It was withdrawn from RAF service in 1947.
The part of the collection you can touch

You can’t fly the Hurricane.
These, you can.

Some legends only live in museums — others are fuelled and waiting. MiGFlug has put civilians in real military jet cockpits since 2004.

See all flights & prices
Related Aircraft

Continue the tour

The GlamourSupermarine SpitfireThe elegant fighter that got the headlines — faster and higher-flying than the Hurricane, and its partner in winning the Battle of Britain.See the SpitfireThe AdversaryMesserschmitt Bf 109The Luftwaffe fighter the Hurricanes and Spitfires met over southern England in the summer of 1940.See the Bf 109The Merlin CousinP-51 MustangThe American fighter transformed by the same Rolls-Royce Merlin that powered the Hurricane into a war-winning long-range escort.See the Mustang
Sources & Further Reading

Every fact, checked

  • RAF MuseumService entry, squadron numbers, construction and the “more than all other defences combined” kill claim; No. 303 Squadron.
  • Imperial War MuseumThe 32 vs 19 squadrons figure, “over half” of kills, the bomber/fighter tactic, the 300 mph “first,” and the Mk IID tank-buster at Bir Hakeim.
  • Smithsonian National Air and Space MuseumDesigner, F.36/34 origin, dimensions and Mk IIC armament.
  • HistoryNetConstruction, ease of build and repair, and the ~55%/42% split of Fighter Command victory claims.
  • History of WarSea Hurricane and “Hurricat,” Everett’s Condor kill, and Operation Hurry to Malta.
  • History HitDevelopment history: Camm, Specification F.36/34, the PV-12/Merlin and the type’s ruggedness.
  • Warfare History NetworkNo. 151 Wing at Murmansk, the Lend-Lease demonstration and the Order of Lenin.
  • RAF Battle of Britain Memorial FlightThe airworthy survivors PZ865 “The Last of the Many” and LF363.
  • This Day in AviationThe 6 November 1935 first flight, test pilot Bulman and production totals.
  • Australian War Memorial & Canada.caCommonwealth operator corroboration for the RAAF and RCAF.