Response to Glider and Juha.

[tcolvin]

Originally Posted by Six Nifty .50s

In December 1942 No. 6 Squadron was withdrawn from the front after losing 14 aircraft in about 300 sorties. They flew defensive patrols over Egypt until March 1943, when they were back in action with the latest Hurricane IID (uprated power and armor protection for the engine and radiator). These "enhancements" imposed a very unfortunate side effect: the aircraft was too heavy to begin with but now it was overweight towards the front, and this caused control problems in all flying maneuvers.

After 6 Squadron moved to Italy in 1944, the Hurricane pilots preferred to carry 3-inch rockets. The 40mm underwing guns were removed due to the considerable nose-down pitch when firing. Even with heavy cannons discarded, the nose armor moved the center of gravity very close to the forward limit.

The decision to rid themselves of the 40mm S gun was requested by front-line RAF pilots, not old men back in England who were supposedly hidebound by the Trenchard doctrines.

The British 40mm gun (and pretty much all other underwing cannons) did not fire accurately compared to internal guns. The best place to hang the outboard gun was on the centerline, to avoid overloading the wings and convergence of fire problems. Obviously that was not possible with single-engine types.

Would you please provide a source for your information, Nifty, as it differs fundamentally from that provided by Christopher Shores' 'Ground Attack Aircraft of WWII'. Shores places the blame for the demise of the Hurricane IID on men in England and not the pilots. I have trusted Shores, and my opinions have been formed on the facts he has supplied. One of you is wrong.

On page 58 Shores stated that "no additional armour protection was fitted to this aircraft (Hurricane IID) to protect the engine, cooling system and pilot from the high volume of ground fire it was likely to counter".
On page 66 of this book, Shores repeated that the Hurricane IIDs lacked any protective armour to the underside of the engine or fuselage, and therefore suffered heavily in the Mareth battle of March 21-25, 1943. They suffered again in April during the Tebaga Gap battle. Then the finger pointing at the Air Ministry; "Efforts were made to provide armour for the Hurricane IID in England, but this was never to reach units in the Mediterranean, and the 'tank-buster' disappeared from Allied service here during May 1943. The British and Americans were unwilling to direct effort to the production of an armoured ground attack aircraft of this nature, as the new rocket projectile was at that time offering promise as a viable anti-tank weapon, while the flexibility of the fighter-bomber appealed more to Allied thinking. However the Hurricane IID was to prove the most accurate aerial anti-tank weapon of the war for the RAF, and the failure of the Anglo-American aviation industry to produce an equivalent of the Il-2 or HS 129B was to be a matter of some regret to a fair proportion of high-ranking Army opinion".

Tony