Poland’s first Hurricanes were bought in 1939 but only one from an
order for ten was delivered before the German invasion, the remaining nine
being allocated to the RAF or diverted to Turkey instead. However, several
expatriate Polish pilots flew Hurricanes within the RAF, with the first
Polish-manned squadrons forming in Britain in 1940, of which Nos.302 and 303
(Polish) Squadrons took part in the Battle of Britain.
In total, seven Polish-manned squadrons, each named after a Polish city
or individual, operated various Marks of Hurricane, namely: No.302 (City of
Poznan); No.303 (Kosciuszko); No.306 (City of Torun); No.308 (City of Krakow);
No.315 (City of Deblin); No.316 (City of Warsaw); No.317 (City of Wilno)
Pilots from 303 (Polish) Squadron: From the left Pilot Officer Miroslaw Feric, Flight Lieutenant John Kent, Pilot Officer Bohdan Grzeszczak, Pilot Officer Jerzy Radomski and Pilot Officer Jan Zumbach in the background, Pilot Officer Witold Lokuciewski, Flying Officer Zdzislaw Henneberg, Sergeant January Rogowski and Sergeant Eugeniusz Szaposznikow.
The Hurricane’s baptism of fire came on 21 October 1939,
when A Flight of No.46 Squadron took off from RAF Digby, Lincolnshire, and was
directed to intercept a formation of nine Heinkel He 115B floatplanes from
1./KüFlGr 906, searching for ships to attack in the North Sea. The He 115s had
already been attacked and damaged by two No.72 Squadron Spitfires when the six
No.46 Squadron Hurricanes intercepted the Heinkels which were flying at sea
level in an attempt to avoid further attacks. Nevertheless the Hurricanes shot
down three of them in rapid succession and damaged another (although No.46
claimed five and No.72 claimed two!)
By late 1939/1940, many of the early delivery machines were
in the process of being updated with ‘metal’ wings, 1,030hp Merlin III engines,
ejector exhaust manifolds, de Havilland and Rotol variable speed three-blade
propellers, reflector gunsights instead of the original ring and bead type,
internal and external armoured windscreens and armour-plated rear cockpit
bulkheads – none of which could be achieved overnight of course – resulting in
a range of modifications, for a while, that numbered an estimated twenty-seven
different standards.
The Phoney War
In response to a request from the French government for ten
fighter squadrons to provide air support, in addition to ten squadrons of
Fairey Battles that were flown to bases in metropolitan France in late
August/early September 1939, Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding,
Commander-in-Chief of RAF Fighter Command, argued that this number of fighters
would severely deplete Fighter Command’s British defences, and so initially
only a token force of four Hurricane squadrons, Nos.1, 73, 85 and 87, were sent
to France in early September 1939, (all Spitfires being retained for Home
defence). The RAF supplied two air contingents initially – the Advanced Air
Striking Force (AASF) and the Air Component of the British Expeditionary Force
(BEF). The four Hurricane squadrons initially formed No.60 Wing within the Air
Component of the BEF, but by the middle of September further RAF squadrons
comprising Blenheim IV bombers and Lysander tactical reconnaissance and army
co-operation aircraft started arriving. Over the following autumn and winter,
the squadrons were rotated around various bases while Nos.1 and 73 Squadrons
were detached from the BEF’s Air Component control during the winter to form
No.67 Fighter Wing attached directly to the AASF.
On 30 October, Hurricane pilots experienced their first
action over France. Pilot Officer P. W. O ‘Boy’ Mould of No.1 Squadron, flying
L1842, shot down a Dornier Do 17P from 2.(F)/123, sent to photograph allied
airfields close to the border, about 10 miles west of Toul, becoming the first
RAF pilot to down an enemy aircraft on the continent in the Second World War.
Flying Officer E. J. ‘Cobber’ Kain, a New Zealander, was responsible for No.73
Squadron’s first victory, on 8 November 1939, whilst stationed at Rouvres. He
went on to become one of the RAF’s first ‘aces’ of the war, being credited with
sixteen ‘kills’ before his death in a flying accident on 6 June 1940.
Hurricanes were also involved in the German invasion of
Norway. On 9 April 1940, under codename Operation Weserübung the Wehrmacht
invaded Denmark, which capitulated after a day, but Norway continued to resist.
On 14 April Allied ground troops were landed in Norway, but by the end of the
month, the southern parts of the country were in German hands. On 14 May 1940,
No.46 Squadron embarked on HMS Glorious and sailed for an airfield near
Harstad, Norway, to augment the Gladiators of No.263 Squadron operating from
improvised airfields and the frozen lake at Lesjaskog, but they had to return
with the carrier to Scapa Flow when the landing ground was found to be
unusable.
On 26 May, ten of the squadron’s Hurricanes were flown off
to Skaanland, but due to the soft surface two crashed on landing so the
remainder were diverted to Bardufoss, sixty miles further north. After
providing fighter cover for the Narvik area for two weeks the order to evacuate
all Allied forces from Norway was received and, on 7 June, despite the lack of
arrester hooks and no deck landing training, the squadron flew its surviving
Hurricanes back on to Glorious’ deck – all landing safely. The squadron’s
ground crews embarked in other ships and re-assembled at Digby, though
tragically, HMS Glorious and her destroyer escort were intercepted by the
German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau during their return home, and
sunk. Only two RAF officers survived the sinking, one being No.46’s CO,
Squadron Leader K. B. B. (later Air Chief Marshal Sir Kenneth) Cross. Despite
this disaster the squadron was operational again by the end of June, at Digby.
Battle of France
By the spring of 1940, it became rapidly apparent that the
handful of Hurricane squadrons based in France would be woefully inadequate to
offset an impending Luftwaffe avalanche. In May, three more Hurricane squadrons,
Nos.3, 79 and 504, were sent to reinforce the earlier units as Germany’s
Blitzkrieg gathered momentum. On 10 May, the first day of the Battle of France,
Hurricane squadrons claimed forty-two Luftwaffe aircraft shot down for the loss
of seven Hurricanes with none of the pilots killed. Hurricane units also
escorted bombers, including those involved with the raids against the
Vroenhoven and Veldwezelt bridges on the Meuse, at Maastricht by No.12
Squadron’s Fairey Battles on 12 May. The escort consisted of eight Hurricanes
from No.1 Squadron, but when the formation approached Maastricht, it was
bounced by Bf 109Es from 2./JG 27. Two Battles and two Hurricanes were shot
down, two more Battles were brought down by flak and the fifth was forced to
crash land.
On 13 May 1940, more Hurricanes arrived, bringing the total
of Hurricane squadrons operating from French soil to ten – Nos. 1, 3, 73, 79,
85, 87, 242, 501, 504 and 615 Squadrons (No. 615 having exchanged its
Gladiators for Hurricanes in the preceding weeks) – but heavy losses continued
and by the end of the first week of fighting only three of the squadrons
remained near operational strength. With ferocious air combat continuing from
dawn to dusk, throughout May, the order was finally received on the afternoon
of 20 May 1940 for all Hurricane units based in northern France to abandon
their bases and return to the UK. During eleven days of fighting in France,
between 10 to 21 May, Hurricane units claimed 499 ‘kills’ and 123 probables,
although contemporary German records examined post-war, attribute 299 Luftwaffe
aircraft destroyed and sixty-five seriously damaged by RAF fighters. Number 1
Squadron was the most successful of the campaign, claiming sixty-three
victories for the loss of five pilots. On the evening of 21 May, the only
Hurricanes still operating in France were those of the AASF that had been moved
to bases around Troyes and when the last Hurricanes left France, of the 452
Hurricanes sent only sixty-six returned to bases in the UK with over 170 having
to be abandoned at their airfields.
During Operation Dynamo – the evacuation of British, French
and Belgian troops cut off by the German army surrounding Dunkirk – Hurricanes
continued to operate from British bases and it was over Dunkirk that the Luftwaffe
suffered its first serious rebuff of the war. Although operating from captured
bases in France, the Bf 109 was at the outer limits of its range and possessed
less flying time over the area than the defending Hurricanes (and Spitfires)
operating from airfields in southern England. Luftwaffe bombers, many still
based in western Germany with farther to fly, found that British fighter
attacks often prevented them from performing to their customary, often
uninterrupted, degree of effectiveness and both sides suffered heavy losses,
which for the Luftwaffe, came as a bit of a shock. For instance, Fliegerkorps
II reported in its War Diary that it lost more aircraft on 27 May attacking the
evacuation area than it had lost in the previous ten days of the campaign.
Initial engagements with the Luftwaffe had showed the
Hurricane to be a tight-turning and steady platform but the Watts two-bladed
propeller was clearly unsuitable and its replacement with de Havilland and
Rotol units was a priority. The Merlin III engine was designed to run on
standard 87 octane aviation fuel, but from early 1940, increasing quantities of
100 octane fuel became available, which together with modifications to allow an
additional 6psi of supercharger boost for five minutes, increased engine output
by nearly 250hp and gave the Hurricane an approximate increase in speed of 25
to 35mph below 15,000ft, which greatly increased the aircraft’s climb rate.
This form of emergency power was an important modification that allowed the
Hurricane to be more competitive against the Bf 109E and to increase its margin
of superiority over the Bf 110C, especially at lower altitudes.
Deliveries of new Hurricanes fitted with Rotol
constant-speed propeller units (CSU) commenced in April/May 1940 and Hurricanes
already in France were being retrofitted with Rotol CSUs by parties of the
manufacturer’s engineers flying out from England to do the work. The Rotol CSU
transformed the Hurricane’s performance and prompted de Havilland to undertake
a modification programme of upgrading its older two-pitch propeller into a
similar CSU, so that by the late spring/early summer of 1940, most frontline
operational Hurricanes were fitted with either Rotol or de Havilland
constant-speed propeller units.
The Battle of Britain
By the end of June 1940, following the fall and surrender of
France on the 22nd, almost half of the RAF’s Fighter Command squadrons were
equipped with Hurricanes. A short lull ensued whilst the Luftwaffe replaced its
losses from the French Campaign and established itself on the airfields in the
countries they had captured. In Britain this time was spent in putting as many
new fighters and trained pilots into service as possible to prepare against the
attack everyone knew was coming. The future of Britain was about to be decided
in the skies above southeast England, and, as the country’s new Prime Minister,
Winston Churchill, who took over the premiership on 10 May, put it, ‘What
General Weygand called the Battle of France is over, the Battle of Britain is
about to begin’
The Battle of Britain officially lasted from 10 July until
31 October 1940, with the heaviest fighting taking place between the beginning
of August and mid-September. On 16 July, Hitler ordered the preparation of a
plan to invade Britain, under ‘Directive No 16: The Preparation of a Landing
Operation against England’ better known today as Operation Sealion. All
preparations were to be made by mid-August and it was scheduled to take place
in mid-September 1940. Sealion called for landings on the south coast of
England, backed by an airborne assault. Neither Hitler nor the Oberkommando der
Wehrmacht (OKW, Supreme Command of the Armed Forces), believed it would be
possible to carry out a successful amphibious assault on Britain until the RAF
had been neutralised. It was believed that air superiority might make a
successful landing possible although it would still be a very risky operation
requiring absolute mastery over the Channel by the Luftwaffe.
The Battle went through a series of phases:
Phase 1: From 10 July to 11 August 1940, which saw a series
of running fights over convoys in the English Channel and occasional attacks on
coastal shipping, convoys and harbours, such as Portsmouth, by Junkers Ju 87
Stuka dive bombers.
Phase 2: From 12 to 23 August 1940 when the Luftwaffe
started to shift its attacks over to RAF airfields, the ground infrastructure
and aircraft factories
Phase 3: Which saw intensified Luftwaffe attacks on RAF
airfields from 24 August to 6 September 1940 – and came very close to destroying
Fighter Command and its bases.
Phase 4: From 7 September to 31 October 1940, when the
Luftwaffe changed its tactics and resorted to attacking areas of political
significance such as London in daylight, using area bombing tactics.
Phase 5: From late September 1940 through to the spring of
1941 when the Luftwaffe turned more and more to a night bombing campaign
against London and the UK’s major cities – known as ‘The Blitz’.
As may be imagined, with Hurricanes making up half of
Fighter Command’s frontline force, the type was heavily committed to the Battle
and Hurricane squadrons were involved in all the Phases, including some of the
first nocturnal interceptions when the Luftwaffe started night bombing raids
from late September. Despite the undoubted abilities of the Spitfire, it was
the Hurricane that scored the higher number of victories during this period,
accounting for almost 60 percent of the recorded 2,739 German losses. Although
the Hurricane was slower than both the Spitfire and the Messerschmitt Bf 109E,
with its thick wings which affected rapid acceleration, it could out-turn both
of them. The Hurricane was a steady gun platform, and in spite of its
performance differences compared to the Bf 109, the Hurricane was still a
capable fighter, especially at lower altitudes. One tactic of the Bf 109 was to
attempt to ‘bounce’ RAF fighters in a dive. If spotted in time, Hurricanes were
able to evade such tactics by turning into the attack or going into a
‘corkscrew dive’, which the ‘109s, with their lower rate of roll, found hard to
counter. If a Bf 109 was engaged in a ‘straight dogfight’, the Hurricane was
just as capable of out-turning it as the Spitfire, although in a stern chase,
the Bf 109 could easily outpace and evade the Hurricane.
In the summer of 1940, Hurricane Is, (and Spitfire Is) were
powered by Merlin III engines, fitted with a float chamber SU carburettor. When
a Hurricane (or Spitfire) performed a negative-G manoeuvre (i.e. pitching the
nose hard down), fuel was forced up to the top of the carburettor’s float
chamber rather than into the engine, leading to loss of power. If the
negative-G continued, then enough fuel would collect in the top of the float
chamber to force the float to the floor of the chamber. This would in turn open
a needle valve to maximum, flooding the carburettor and drowning the
supercharger with an over-rich mixture which would lead to a cutout, thus
shutting down the engine completely – a serious drawback in combat!
Bf 109s and Bf 110s used Daimler-Benz DB 601 inverted V12
engines fitted with fuel injection pumps, not carburettors, which kept their
fuel at a constant pressure whatever manoeuvres they performed and did not
suffer from this problem. They could exploit the difference by pitching steeply
forward whilst pushing the throttle wide open; pursuing British fighters were
left ‘flat footed’ as trying to emulate the manoeuvre would result in loss of
power, or fuel flooding and engine shutdown. The only British countermeasure
available was to half-roll, so the aircraft would only be subjected to
positive-G as they followed a German aircraft into a dive, which invariably
took just enough time to let the enemy escape.
Complaints from the pilots led Beatrice Tilly’ Shilling, a
young engineer working at the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) at
Farnborough, to devise a disarmingly simple solution – a flow restrictor which
was a small metal disc, much like a metal washer. The restrictor orifice was
made to accommodate just the fuel needed for maximum engine power, the power
setting usually used during dogfights. Whilst not completely solving the
problem, the restrictor, along with modifications to the needle valve,
permitted Hurricane and Spitfire pilots to perform quick negative-G manoeuvres
without loss of engine power. In early 1941, Miss Shilling and a small team
from the RAE travelled around Fighter Command’s airfields fitting these
restrictors, giving priority to front-line units and by March 1941 the device
had been installed throughout RAF Fighter Command. Officially named the ‘RAE
restrictor’, the device was immensely popular with pilots, who affectionately
named it ‘Miss Shilling’s orifice’ or simply the ‘Tilly orifice’. This simple
solution was only ever a stopgap as it did not allow inverted flight for any
length of time, however, the problems were ultimately overcome by the
introduction of Bendix and later Rolls-Royce pressure-carburettors in 1943.
