It was overshadowed in the public consciousness by the Supermarine Spitfire during the Battle of Britain in 1940, but the Hurricane inflicted 60% of the losses sustained by the Luftwaffe in the campaign, and fought in all the major theatres of the Second World War.

The Hurricane originated from discussions between RAF officials and aircraft designer Sir Sydney Camm about a proposed monoplane derivative of the Hawker Fury biplane in the early 1930s.

Despite an institutional preference for biplanes and lack of interest by the Air Ministry, Hawker refined its monoplane proposal, incorporating several innovations which became critical to wartime fighter aircraft, including retractable landing gear and the more powerful Rolls-Royce Merlin engine.

Earlier, during 1933, British aircraft designer Sydney Camm had conducted discussions with Major John Buchanan of the Directorate of Technical Development on a monoplane based on the existing Fury.

[4] Mason attributes Camm's discussions with figures within the RAF, such as Squadron Leader Ralph Sorley, as having provoked the specification and some of its details, such as the preference for armaments being installed within the wings instead of within the aircraft's nose.

[5] An outline of the "Fury Monoplane" armed with two guns in the wings and two in the nose and powered by the Goshawk engine was prepared and discussed with Roger Liptrot of the Air Ministry in December 1933.

[7] Camm's initial submission in response to the earlier fighter specification F.7/30 was a development of the Fury, the Hawker P.V.3, [N 1][8] However, the P.V.3 was not among the proposals which the Air Ministry selected to be built as prototype to official contract.

[N 2] After the rejection of the P.V.3 proposal, Camm started work on a new design involving a cantilever monoplane arrangement with a fixed undercarriage, armed with four machine guns and powered by the Rolls-Royce Goshawk engine.

In August 1934, a one-tenth scale model of the design was produced and sent to the National Physical Laboratory at Teddington, where a series of wind tunnel tests confirmed the aerodynamics were satisfactory, and in September 1934 Camm again approached the Air Ministry.

Of the decision to place eight machine guns in fighters, Claude Hilton Keith, at the time assistant director of armament research and development, said "The battle was brisk and was carried into very high quarters before the implementing authority was given.

[23] As war was looking likely, and time was of the essence in providing the RAF with an effective fighter, the authorities expected there to be problems with the more advanced Spitfire, while the Hurricane made use of well proven manufacturing techniques.

In 1938/39 the RCAF ordered 24 Hurricanes to equip one fighter squadron, 20 of which were delivered, and two were supplied to Canadian Car and Foundry as pattern aircraft but one probably did not arrive, while the other was returned to Britain in 1940.

[36] The original two-bladed propeller was found to be inefficient at low airspeeds and the aircraft required a long ground run to get airborne, which caused concern at Fighter Command.

With its ease of maintenance, widely set landing gear and benign flying characteristics, the Hurricane remained in use in theatres of operations where reliability, easy handling and a stable gun platform were more important than performance, typically in roles like ground attack.

[citation needed] By the middle of 1938, the first 50 Hurricanes had reached squadrons and, at that time, it had been assessed that the rate of production was slightly greater than the RAF's capacity to introduce the new aircraft, which had already been accelerated.

[citation needed] Hurricane production was increased as part of a plan to create a reserve of attrition aircraft as well as re-equip existing squadrons and newly formed ones such as those of the Auxiliary Air Force.

1 Group RAF (Air Vice-Marshal Patrick Playfair) sent its 10 Fairey Battle day-bomber squadrons to France, according to plans established by the British and French earlier in the year.

[51] Owing to the Hurricane's rugged construction, ease of maintenance and repair in the field, and its docile landing and take-off characteristics, coupled with a wide-track undercarriage, it was selected to go to France as the principal RAF fighter.

[53] After his first flight in October 1939, Hurricane pilot Roland Beamont subsequently flew operationally with 87 Squadron, claiming three enemy aircraft during the French campaign, and delivered great praise for his aircraft's performance: Throughout the bad days of 1940, 87 Squadron had maintained a proficient formation aerobatic team, the precise flying controls and responsive engines permitting precision formation through loops, barrel rolls, 1 g semi-stall turns and rolls off half-loops ... My Hurricane was never hit in the Battles of France and Britain, and in over 700 hr on type I never experienced an engine failure.While the opening months of the war were characterised by little air activity in general, there were sporadic engagements and aerial skirmishes between the two sides.

On 22 December, the Hurricanes in France suffered their first losses: three, while trying to intercept an unidentified aircraft between Metz and Thionville, were jumped by four Bf 109Es from III./JG 53, with their Gruppenkommandeur, Spanish Civil War ace Captain Werner Mölders, in the lead.

On 10 May, the first day of the Battle of France, Flight Lieutenant R. E. Lovett and Flying Officer "Fanny" Orton, of 73 Squadron, were the first RAF pilots to engage enemy aircraft in the campaign.

Whilst performing in a ground support role, Hurricanes based at RAF Castel Benito, Tripoli, knocked out six tanks, 13 armoured vehicles, 10 lorries, five half-tracks, a gun and trailer, and a wireless van on 10 March 1943, with no losses to themselves.

[115] In the spring of 1943, during the German Ochsenkopf offensive in Tunisia, Hurricane IIDs conducted many sorties after fog had lifted, helping to blunt the final attack at Hunts Gap.

Outnumbered, usually, by 12 or 14 to one and, later – with the arrival of the Bf 109Fs in Sicily – outperformed, the pilots of the few old aircraft which the ground crews struggled valiantly to keep serviceable, went on pressing their attacks, ploughing their way through the German fighter screens, and our flak, to close in with the Ju 87s and 88s as they dived for their targets.

[124] During 1941, Mk.II Hurricanes played an important air defence role when the Soviet Union found itself under threat from the approaching German Army, who were advancing across a broad front stretching from Leningrad and Moscow to the oil fields in the south.

Britain's decision to aid the Soviets meant sending supplies by sea to the far northern ports, and as the convoys needed to sail within range of enemy air attack from the Luftwaffe based in neighbouring Finland, it was decided to deliver a number of Hurricane Mk.IIBs, flying with Nos.

On occasion, the eight or 12 rifle-calibre machine guns did not damage the sturdy and heavily armoured German aircraft; consequently, Soviet ground crews started to remove the Brownings.

Following the outbreak of the war with Japan, 51 Hurricane Mk.IIBs en route to Iraq were diverted to Singapore; 10 were in crates, the others partially disassembled, these and the 24 pilots (many of whom were veterans of the Battle of Britain), who had been transferred to the theatre, formed the nucleus of five squadrons.

The Hurricanes first saw action on the morning of 20 January 1942, when twelve aircraft of 232 Squadron intercepted a mixed IJN and IJAAF formation of about 80 bombers escorted by fighters, the heaviest air raid on Singapore.

For example, on 26 May 1944, Royal Navy Sea Hurricanes operating from the escort carrier HMS Nairana claimed the destruction of three Ju 290 reconnaissance aircraft during the defence of a convoy.