Stoney wrote:
Having hangarer with a Hurricane for 13 years, it don't look right to me. Always wondered why they didn't weld it as it would have made a better frame. Some junctions have as many as 108 parts, plates, nuts & bolts, rivets and the round tubing made square on the ends for the attaching plates, crazy.
Maybe, maybe not. There was a very sensible method in their madness in that they had a factory and fittings set up to undertake that kind of assembly, they knew how to do it, from the Hawker Hart and Hawker Fury family, and they got on with it in a period when time was pressing. (You'll know, I'm sure how much the Hurricane frame was basically a beefed up Fury frame concept.)
'What ifs' are risky, but, if they'd gone for a (to Hawker) 'new' production methodology, there would
certainly have been a lot less Hurricanes in 1939/40. The sudden expansion for Supermarine meant that the Spitfire was simply not available in great numbers during the Battle of Britain. Given it's a fact that during the Battle
Hurricanes shot down more enemy aircraft than all the other defences combined, less Hurricanes would probably have been critical. Those lost in France in May 1940 could have been the straw that broke the camel's back. (On the other hand the RAF didn't run short of fighters, but did run shot of pilots. What the margin of excess of fighters was is hard to say.)
That 'odd' and over-complex construction did the job.
At least they're not trying to sell it as 'Spitfire'.
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