Placing the Bell P39 Aircobra.

[tcolvin]

Originally Posted by Graham Boak

Re Hurricanes: the armour plate behind the pilot was there on the standard aircraft, so would not be counted in any deltas.

I have checked against Shore's description on the desert Hurricane Mk.IId. Nowhere does it state that the the armour was in existence and deliberately taken out because of RAF instructions, as you suggest. He states that the design did not have it, which is well known. I suggest it is ambiguities in the word "omission" that has mislead you. It was omitted for the same reason as a cigar lighter - because it was not specified and not available. I grant you that it would have been more useful than a cigar lighter, but as Shores points out it would also have penalised the already poor performance of the tropicalised Mk.IId. Life is full of compromises, and combat aircraft design has many.

1. It is not clear 350 lbs is a delta although that is how it's described in Jane's, which calls it "additional" armour. But "additional" to what? The MkI was issued without any armour and the armoured seatback was retrofitted, IIRC, during the Battle of Britain. So was armour, and if so how much, ever part of the MkI specification? Has anyone got the absolute weight of armour fitted to the Hurricane IV, please?

2. I don't know what edition of Shores you have. But mine has the following; "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 during May 1943". Shores is here referring obliquely to events that I have read about in some other tome that I cannot recall, which stated that the armour was designed and built in Britain before being cancelled by RAF bigwigs who did not want to go down that route, for the reasons we know - ffing bloodymindedness and refusal to cooperate with the army.
And did you read Shores' understatement of the year at the end of the paragraph on the Hurricane IID's armour question; "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 Hs129B was to be a matter of some regret to a fair proportion of high-ranking army opinion". Cor, not arf! But it wasn't the industry that failed the army, but rather RAF tunnel-thinking and obstructionism prevented the army from getting effective CAS.

You may have gathered I feel heated about this question. Damned right. I know the graves in the Reichswald where the results of RAF bigotry lie buried. It was one thing for the RAF to allow Butcher Harris free rein to butcher his aircrew in something called The Battle of Berlin ("it will cost the Germans the war", Harris predicted), but another for bastards like Coningham and Tedder to prevent the army from looking after its own by providing half decent equipment.