Ask almost anyone which aircraft won the Battle of Britain and you will get the same answer: the Spitfire. It is one of the most beautiful machines ever built, and it has earned its legend. But it is, at best, only half the story.

The aircraft that actually shot down more of the Luftwaffe in the summer of 1940 was slower, older-looking, and partly covered in fabric. It was the Hawker Hurricane — and for eighty-five years it has flown in the Spitfire’s shadow.

Older, Tougher, and Everywhere

Designed by Sir Sydney Camm as a monoplane evolution of the Hawker Fury biplane, the Hurricane reached RAF squadrons in 1937 — the service’s first monoplane fighter and its first capable of more than 300 mph. Where the Spitfire was a sleek, all-metal thoroughbred, the Hurricane kept a traditional structure of steel tubing and fabric over much of the rear fuselage. It looked like yesterday’s aircraft. That turned out to be a strength.

The Numbers Don’t Lie

When the Battle of Britain was over and the claims were tallied, the Hurricane came out on top. RAF Fighter Command credited it with roughly 656 of the 1,107 enemy aircraft destroyed — comfortably more than half, and more than the Spitfire. There were simply more Hurricanes in the fight: they equipped the majority of Fighter Command’s squadrons that summer.

A Division of Labour

The two fighters were used differently, by design. Whenever possible, controllers sent the faster, higher-flying Spitfires to tangle with the Messerschmitt Bf 109 escorts, while the Hurricanes went for the bombers — the aircraft actually dropping high explosive on British cities and airfields. The Hurricane was ideal for the job: its thick wings made it a rock-steady gun platform, and its eight Browning machine guns were grouped close together for a concentrated, accurate burst.

And when it got hurt — which it did — the Hurricane was far easier to patch up. A cannon shell that would write off a stressed-metal Spitfire wing often punched straight through a Hurricane’s fabric, leaving a repairable hole. Ground crews could turn damaged Hurricanes around and get them back into the air fast.

The Workhorse of the War

The Hurricane’s war did not end with Britain’s skies. It fought across North Africa and Malta, was shipped in numbers to the Soviet Union, flew off catapult-armed merchant ships and carriers as the Sea Hurricane, dropped bombs as the “Hurribomber,” and even hunted tanks with 40 mm cannon. More than 14,000 were built, in just about every role a fighter could be asked to fill.

The Spitfire was the icon, and deservedly so. But the Hurricane was the workhorse — and in the summer that decided Britain’s survival, the workhorse did the heavier lifting.

Sources: Imperial War Museum; Interesting Engineering; We Are The Mighty; Hush-Kit; Wikipedia.