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Battle of Britain: without the hurricane the battle would have been lost
When we think of the Battle of Britain, we think of the Spitfire, but in this extract from his book Hurricane: The Last Witnesses, Brian Milton honours the Hurricane and its pilots.


In the Battle of Britain, Hurricanes scored the highest number of RAF victories, accounting for 1,593 out of the 2,739 total claimed. By the beginning of 1941 German pilots had their measure. It did not do for a [Messerschmitt] Bf 109 to get into a dogfight with Hurricanes because the Hurricane could out-turn it, but the Bf 109 pilots’ “dive and zoom” tactics put Hurricane pilots at a severe disadvantage.

Yet those crucial months in 1939-40 were everything. Without the Hurricane, the Battle of Britain would have been lost. A total of 1,715 Hurricanes flew with Fighter Command during the period of the battle, far in excess of all other British fighters combined. Having entered service a year before the Spitfire, the Hurricane was “half a generation” older, and markedly inferior in terms of speed and climb. However, the Hurricane had proved itself a robust, manoeuvrable aircraft capable of surviving fearsome combat damage. Unlike the Spitfire, it was a wholly operational, go-anywhere, do-anything fighter by July 1940

The crucial tactic in how Fighter Command approached the battle was exactly how to engage the massed formations of German aircraft. Hurricanes were generally directed at the bombers; they were a steady gun platform, and had a speed difference over Do 17 and He 111s that they did not have over Bf 109s. The Spitfires were directed at the German fighters.

“Last Witness” Bob Doe explains: “An average pilot could get more from a Hurricane than from a Spitfire. But if you were good you could get more from a Spitfire. A Hurricane was like a brick-built s---house. It was sturdy and reliable, and it did not leap about when the guns were fired.

“I did get bashed around in the first year of the war, and I was very lucky. My official Battle of Britain score was 14½ – the ½ meant you shared a kill with another pilot.”

[Hermann] Göring claimed there were two main aims, to destroy the RAF and stop seaborne supplies. A key to both was the use of the fearsome Ju 87 Stuka, the dive-bomber which played such a large part in the defeat of France. It was planned to attack specific English targets with Ju 87s, forcing the RAF fighters to defend, and therefore enticing them up to be destroyed by Bf 109s. Göring believed that not only the Hurricane but the Spitfire was inferior to the Messerschmitt Bf 109. The Germans wanted to engage, fighter to fighter, but the RAF would not waste time doing this, going instead for the bombers. A downside for the Germans was that, caught by either a Hurricane or a Spitfire having burst through the protective German fighter screen, Stukas were easy meat. Young RAF pilots talked of “Stuka Parties”, and relished getting into a fight with them.

''Last Witness’’ Mike Croskell was early into the fight: “On August 11, flying with 213 Hurricane Squadron, I chased a Junkers 88 and got a good old burst of shot into it. The chaps got out of it, sat on the wing and then slid off with their parachutes, which opened, and the aircraft went down.

“Then I got tied up with five 109s, all chasing around in circles, until I got into the inner circle and shot the last one down. They all buzzed off but I was out of ammunition anyway. We only had 10 or 12 seconds firing. I was confident that in a scrap with Bf 109s, the Hurricane could always out-turn it. What the 109s used to do was stick the nose down good and hard, and dive down. We had the old float-chamber carburettor in those days, and the engine used to go 'phut’ when you stuck the nose down. Until we got the new carburettor we could not really follow them.”

The problem Croskell faced plagued Spitfires and Hurricanes in 1940 using the Merlin engine, fitted with an “SU” carburettor. When they went into negative G by pitching the nose hard down, fuel was forced to the top of the float chamber. This starved the engine, which lost power for two or three seconds. If the negative G continued, the carburettor flooded and drowned the supercharger with over-rich mixture. This could shut down the engine completely, not the sort of thing you wanted in a fight to the death. German fighter pilots, whose engines were fuel-injected, did not suffer this problem.

On September 7 the Blitz began, with German bombers heading for London and other cities, a process set to horrify Londoners over 57 consecutive nights. It was probably the single silliest thing Hitler did at that part of the war.

''Last Witness’’ Bob Foster, flying Hurricanes with 605 Squadron, moved down from 13 Group on September 7: “We landed at Croydon, having flown in from Scotland and refuelled at Abingdon, and we saw London burning. That was our first sight of the real war.

“I remember Bunny Curran say, 'Oh God, we’re really in for it now, if this is what it’s like.’ I didn’t fly for a couple of days. We had a full squadron, that is, 20-odd pilots and 12 Hurricanes in operation at any one time. We had our first casualties then, a chap called Jack Fleming was shot down in flames. He got out but was burnt badly, finished up in [the pioneering plastic surgeon] Archie McIndoe’s for 18 months. He was weaving behind the squadron – we flew in tight formations still, with weavers at the back – and old Jack was a weaver. He saw some 109s and was alerting the squadron. He didn’t see the other 109s behind him.

“The weavers often got caught, and as a tactic, it was no good at all. With hindsight, I think we stuck to our tight formations for far too long. Despite all the casualties, we still flew in these nice tight 'vics’ [V formation] of three, four sections of three to make a squadron. Sometimes it was three sections and one at the back and two weavers. These were not effective because you lose your weaver sometimes and then who is looking after your back?

“The tactic for going into bombers was probably all right, line astern, each of us having a go. But it ignored the fact that we were probably being jumped by 109s at the same time. The theory of the tactic was great. Before the war there was an Air Ministry publication showing you how to attack enemy bombers. It was a series of little drawings where the bombers were flying along. The first drawing you had a section of three aircraft going in the other direction, then they all turned around and all lined up behind the bombers – and when your flight commander said 'Open fire’ you opened fire. And in the pictures, all three bombers are shot down. It never happened like that but that was the official way of attacking bombers.”

On September 15 came one of the heaviest days of fighting in the whole battle. It is now recognised as “Battle of Britain Day”. Mike Croskell was shot down, although with an unexpected silver lining to a near-death experience. “I went out and found a lone Dornier flying towards the docks in London. I didn’t get right down into the best position to have a shot at it, and all of a sudden there were three or four loud bangs behind me. These two Bf 109s had put four explosive cannon shells into me. These shells were a deadly weapon – we didn’t have anything like that, they were very effective – most of the tail disappeared and down I went, completely out of control.

“I went down and down and down and couldn’t get out, couldn’t get the hood open because the cannon shells jammed it. Eventually, in desperation, I undid my belt, crouched on the seat with both feet, and pulled with both hands. All of a sudden it came open and I was flung out. I seemed to be only 200ft [61m] up, and the parachute opened as I hit the ground. A copse of young trees broke my fall. I had not the foggiest idea where I was.

“I just had a good swear, and was found there by some New Zealand anti-aircraft blokes. I was bleeding all over the place, particularly in the left foot. They were determined to cut my shoe off but, being a mean Yorkshireman, I said, 'No, you’re not going to.’ While I was arguing, they cut the other shoe off. And then I got whipped into hospital and was there for three or four weeks. I finished up in a military hospital, Halton.

“All these years later I cannot have an MRI scan because there are still too many bits of metal in me. They are small bits, but I also have bits in the back of my knee and my foot and my shoulder. I also cannot have an operation to remove the shrapnel in my head because two of the bits are too near my brain… which probably accounts for a lot.

“But while my mates continued with the Battle of Britain, I chatted up the Nursing Sister, Mollie Davies, married her, and lived happily ever after.”

Bob Doe, having made his first 13 kills on a Spitfire with 234 Squadron, was one of only three unwounded survivors by early September. He had been fighting continuously for 28 days, when he was sent back with the squadron remnants to Cornwall to get new pilots and train them. “I was posted to 238 Squadron on September 27 on Hurricanes, where I got three more. I was posted in as a flight commander, but never got the rank. I was a pilot officer, the lowest commissioned rank, and I was actually CO at one time.

“I did two hours flying on Hurricanes before I went back into the battle. Whereas the Spitfire was a musician’s aeroplane, a dream, the Hurricane was a very efficient workman’s tool. The Hurricane needed brute force. I don’t like putting the Hurricane down because I spent most of the war flying Hurricanes, but it did not have the finesse of the Spitfire.”


Taken from 'Hurricane: The Last Witnesses’, by Brian Milton.

Brian Milton's book, published by Andre Deutsch Ltd, is available to buy from The Telegraph Battle of Britain Bookshop for £16.99 plus £1.25 p&p