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.

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.

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.

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.