On Tue, 2004-03-09 at 02:35, Jon Stockill wrote: > On Tue, 9 Mar 2004, Vivian Meazza wrote: > > > delightful to fly, and forgiving in combat manoeuvre. Unlike the Typhoon and > > the Tempest the engine didn't stop or the tail fall off, although if you > > really went mad you could break the wings. It was in production in various > > I remember a tv programme a while ago where a particularly proud hurricane > pilot said "It was a lovely aircraft... and you'll not pull the wings of a > hurricane!".
Read a memoir someplace on the web sometime ago, this particular pilot managed to hit the wing of his Hurricane onto a tree and the wing stayed attached and he managed to make a safe landing. He said that if it had been a Spitfire the wing would have been ripped off. A lot of Hurricane pilots did carry burn scars from the plane, used to take damage well, but if it caught fire it would not take long before most of the airplane was engulfed, hence they wouls say, "Hurricane burns". But then quite a few lived...The Bf109 had its fuel tank right below the cockpit, if that went up then pilot had really no chance of getting out. (Onn the subject of bailing out, after a certain speed the canopy would become impossible to open...Thats unimaginable). > > I wouldn't say the spitfire was over hyped, but I do think the hurricane > requires a bit more credit. Yes, but so do the radar operators, the pilots of quite a few other types of planes that never get mentioned much, but still played a role (Defiant's, Wellington's, Blenheim's etc). I'd love to see the night fighting aspect explored too. I do recommend getting "The Battle of Britain" by Matthew Parker though, does not deal with statistics but also tells the lives of these pilots and the civilians who were on the ground. Matt _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
