[Juha]

Hello Tony
if you are interested in Hurricane, Mason’s Hurricane book might be a good buy, even if rather old and I don’t know how easily one can find a copy. I haven’t seen it.

I have not believed everything what Mason has written on Hawker planes but he had studied extensively the subject. The fact is that best way to find out facts is to consult several good sources and then try to weight evidence on matters on which there are conflicting info or go to primary sources and try to find the truth by oneself.

IMHO Hurricane IV was too slow and underpowered to work with acceptable loss rate in ETO. But I haven’t studied the matter so its only a hunch. But for ex 184 Sqn ORBs are available online, so if you are interested in the question, read through the ORBs from late 43 to March 44 and make your mind on it. I can only say that the two Mk IV losses I know, one crashed during exercise in GB and one was shot down in NW France, both were powered by Merlin XX even if Hurri IV should have had more powerful Merlin 24, at least according to many reference books. The early production Hurri IV lost in the accident doesn’t prove much but the probably later production (according to serial number) lost in operation is a odd case. The flight leader of the pilot during the accident thought that the reason to the accident was that the pilot, while not inexperience Hurri pilot was new on Mk IV and so was surprised by its slugginess. The plane hit ground during low level mock attack on a vehicle convoy.

Usually Shores is a good source, no doubt on that. But if there is a conflict between a reliable writer who has written on wide variety of subjects and a reliable writer who is specialized on the subject in hand as a rule of thumb I tended to believe the specialist. But it is only a rule of thumb and one must weigh the matter case by case and the best way is to try to find a third opinion, in Hurri IID case that might be a sqn history of the 6 Sqn, if there is a good one around.

Juha