I was driving past Duxford, the airbase near Cambridge, at the weekend and unfortunately, I was so busy with other things that yours truly did not have time to go to the airshow there. They were marking the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. Then, as now, the skies were a deadly clear blue – ideal for any bombers looking to find their targets at the time. We curse heavy clouds in Britain, but we should be grateful for them occasionally.
It is perhaps not surprising why this epic battle over the south and southeast of England continues to capture imaginations, even among those usually and rightly wary about military power: there is the fact that the battle was a largely defensive one, pitting a relatively under-strength air force up against a larger, and more battle-hardened, German airforce, although the UK had the great benefit of an integrated radar/fighter dispersal system put in place in the late 1930s and run with magnificent calm by Dowding. If there ever was a case of a relatively clear Good versus Evil sort of conflict, this surely was it. (That should get the peaceniks going, Ed). For us aviation nuts, there is, obviously, the aesthetic as well as emotional appeal of one of the most beautiful aircraft ever built. And whatever some revisionists might claim, there is little doubt in my mind that Britain’s decision to resist invasion in that year rather than agree some sort of grubby and easily-broken deal with Hitler was the right one.
Many of those who fought in the skies are no longer with us; soon, this conflict will be captured not in first-hand memories, but in books, films and TV documentaries. Here is a review of three books of that conflict.
The headline on this blog entry was taken from one of my favourite war films, The Battle of Britain. It was uttered by the great Ralph Richardson. The film does have some great one-liners. I must run that DVD again some time.
Of course, the outcome of the Battle of Britain could’ve been very different had there not been a fair contingent of battle-hardened Poles who fought with a ferocity that few Englishmen could match. 😉
A beautiful bird indeed.
There was a thread last year (?) on Swordfish. At the time I was about to read my late father’s dog-eared copy of War in a Stringbag. Having now done so I thoroughly recommend it to you all. As well as a lot of anecdote (including a descriptionof the Dunkirk evacuation from the air) it became clear how the combination of long range fuel tanks and custom built carriers enabled naval aviation to completely change the projection of power. One of the greatest ever military paradigm shifts.
My mother is still with us, just, and filled my childhood with tales of London in the blitz, such as the day 10,000 bombs went off and mental pictures of heaps of rubble in Cheapside with secretaaries working on their typewriters on the tops. I remembered this when working in Paris at the time of the first Gulf War. On Saturday morning after war was declared I went out for a haircut – in my small street in a Parisian equivalent of Kensington there were no less than three salons – and chatting to the barber I asked how business was. Turnover had gone down by 70% since war broke out, it seemed, as residents in this infinitely improbable terrorist target were too scared to go a few metres from their doorways. I found this incredible; on the other hand my French work colleagues found it incredible I could think otherwise.
O/T this cultural difference explains not merely why Paris survived as a magnificent city (they surrendered quickly) but also the existence of the boulevard peripherique as the closest orbital motorway to any historic city. The war having shown that the old city walls and ditches were a complete anachronism, by getting rid of them they had the land to construct the new roads with no difficulty whatsoever. Not many people know that…
The Battle of Britain was indeed a great movie.
The lesson for us in 2010 is that defensive measures, even if they are not 100% can still make a difference. Baldwin explained that “The bomber will always get through.” and this was why it was useless to try and stop it. Others disagreed and Fighter Command got the barely adequate resources it needed.
In 1983 Ronald Reagan proposed that the US devote some of its military effort to building a defense against ballistic missiles. This is still a controversial idea, ICBM’s are much harder to shoot down than bombers and the weapons involved do not have dashing young pilots controlling them.
Still defending one’s homeland against attack may not win wars, but it does prevent defeat. This is why 1940 will always be remembered at the year that Britain saved human civilization.
Is there anyone here who knows a lot about the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine? I saw one at a museum in the North East, it had the rocker covers removed so that you could see the valve gear. The four valves per cylinder were actuated by overhead cams via rockers. I was puzzled that the rocker pivot shafts appeared to be arranged to revolve by being driven by gears from the camshafts, not only that, the inlet and exhaust rocker shafts were apparently required to rotate at different speeds. The question that I am asking is, do the rocker shafts revolve and if so why? the only reason I could think of was to even out wear, but then why the need for the different speeds?
The Battle of Britian was, is and always will remain, one of the definitive decisive battles of all the world, I hope for ever.
It is notable for:-
(1) Being the only major air battle for outright overwhelming of the enemy, in which the defending side was “left in possession of the field” (Bomber Command’s “Battle of Berlin” does not count since that was not ever designed to knock Hitler out of the war directly),
(2) Its confirmation strategically to the world, that those lunatic suicidal English actually meant business while yet being entirely alone (officially alone at least) and declining to “offer peace terms” to the Nazis,
(3) Being the main 1940 event, apart from Dunkirk, which _/bought time/_ for Hitler to start making the grave strategic mistakes that he did later, such as Operation Barbarossa (and worse for him, the 4-6 week delay caused to that operation by having to divert 28 top-flight divisions to Yugoslavia and Greece,
(4) Being the occasion for someone (it happened to be Churchill) to fashion the English Language into a weapon of liberating war. You cannot but agree that on hearing “let is therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that…….a thousand years (that has GOT TO be a direct dig!), THIS was their finest hour”, your flesh comes up in goose-bumps and you get that old lump in the throat.
(5) @Andrzej
Polish 302 and 303 Squadron (and other lone Poles in other outfits too) I think destroyed more enemy planes, for less % loss per squadron, than most others in 1940. I think their final tally was 128 actually verified, it may have been more. (And don’t forget the poor old Czechs your good neighbours!) It did not do them any harm to be so angry, as of course you’d expect them to be.
I am old enough to have still seen Spitfires in RAF service – not front line but still up there in the skies, from time to time. There is nothing like the sound of a Merlin, not on this earth. I don’t know what it is: ME-109s, and others, had big V-12s, but this is somewhat different and I can’t explain it. We are, at once, both deeply blessed and terribly unfortunate, to have lived in a time when we heard this sound, and knew it for what it is.
IIRC ME-109’s were diesels.
I suspect the rotation of the rocker pillars were some factor to do with lubrication, spring resonance and other harmonics.
And remember the Merlin went on to power the P51B Mustang which, until it was given that engine, was a pretty useless, wheezing crate.
That RR line and the accompanying set of great quotes – “The Furher’s guarantees guarantee nothing”, “not until you are marching up Whitehall…and even then we won’t listen!”.
I think the last quote may be a bit revisionist – one wonders what would have happened and what people and the Establishment would have done.
Still…Went The Day Well.
The DB-601 A1 was fuel-injected.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daimler-Benz_DB_601
Cheers
“The DB-601 A1 was fuel-injected.”
Which was famously one of the advantages that the Me109 had over (early versions of) the spitfire.
the spitfire needed to keep positive G to ensure fuel flow to the engine. Thus, Me109s could go into a sharp dive, where a following spitfire had to roll upside down first in order to pull back on the stick (and the same again the other way round).
Might be apocryphal but that’s what I heard.
Whilst the air battle of Britain was great, the British Navy has felt grieved that people don’t recognise that Hitler would still have been defeated at Sea if he had tried to invade! The Air force was one fist, the Navy was the other. Both were needed!
So, whilst I agree that the flyers did a great job, they were not the only line of defence.
I would add The Last Enemy to any should read list of books about the Battle of Britain.
Interestingly, Britain was not technically superior, in fact, as the war progressed, the Germans were still ahead in aircraft technology.
One of the factors that gave Britain the edge was that the Spitfire was a dedicated interceptor aircraft, whereas Hitler insisted that all German aircraft have a ground attack capability, as such there was no dedicated anti-interceptor or air superiority design to decisively outperform the Spitfire, which was fortunate, as an interceptor version of the Bf 109 would have make life a lot more difficult.
Even though later aircraft, like the Me 262, were still vastly superior in performance, they were crippled by the ground attack design restraints. It is a reflection on attitude as much as altitude, interception is seen as “weak defensive”, but Britain turned that into a winning strategy.
Stonyground: The answer to your question is that the rocker shafts were used to drive the engine auxilliaries.
Tim: The Daimler-Benz engine in the Me109 was gasoline powered just like the Merlin. Also, the core Allison engine in the early Mustang was generally comparable to the Merlin – it only lacked an efficient supercharger (the US favoured turbochargers). A superb supercharger was the key to the success of the Merlin – that, and the high octane gas required to utilize increased boost pressure. At the start of the war the Merlin III gave 1030hp on 87 octane gas – in early 1940 the availability of 100 octane gas allowed the exact same same engine to give 1310hp due to an increase in the allowed supercharger boost pressure – just in time for the Battle of Britain!
The Spitfire was outclassed until the Mark V version came along by the FW 190, a massively powerful, radial engined fighter that was a meance to Allied bombers. However, the P-51 Mustang, once equipped with the Merlin, and drop tanks and that excellent .5 calibre weaponry, was more than a match for the Germans.
The co-ordination efforts and logistics that lay behind Fighter Command in 1940 don’t always get the attention they deserve.
I should also mention the Hurricane, the less glamorous UK fighter, but a rugged little blighter of a plane, able to take punishment and nice to fly, according to the pilots who were on it.
I should also mention the Hurricane, the less glamorous UK fighter, but a rugged little blighter of a plane, able to take punishment and nice to fly, according to the pilots who were on it.
Also had more kills than the Spit over the war.
Thanks Sean, it seems like a trivial question but it has been bugging me ever since. I’m not sure if the engine in question was incomplete, had the auxiliaries been visible, the answer would presumably been obvious.
Johnathan:
It was the Mk V Spitfire which was outclassed by the FW190, this led to the development of the Mk IX, which was the definitive Merlin engined Spitfire, and served until the end of the war.
John K is correct and beat me to it, haha. The Mk V was significantly outclassed by the Fw190A, which lead to the Mk IX and the later Griffon engined beasts.
The Pedant-General wrote:
“The DB-601 A1 was fuel-injected.”
Which was famously one of the advantages that the Me109 had over (early versions of) the spitfire.
the spitfire needed to keep positive G to ensure fuel flow to the engine. Thus, Me109s could go into a sharp dive, where a following spitfire had to roll upside down first in order to pull back on the stick (and the same again the other way round).
Might be apocryphal but that’s what I heard.”
All true, and solved in the early marks by the addition of an anti-drainback restrictor to the SU carb float bowl assembly. This allowed the engine to continue running at full combat power without flooding out during negative-G excursions, although not indefinitely.
Developed by RAE engineer Beatrice Shilling, this 10-minute upgrade was known ever after as Miss Shilling’s Orifice.
Problem later solved by a positive-pressure throttle-body injection carburettor (various types and models).
Regarding the apparently-rotating rocker shafts – not quite as described. The rocker shafts themselves do not rotate – they are used as mountings for pinion gears driven off separate gear segments added to the camshaft drive bevel gear, which in turn drive various auxiliaries, depending on the model of the engine and its application. For example, when mounted in multi-engine bombers, these auxiliary drives provided hydraulic pressure circuits to operate the turrets, bomb bay doors, and so forth. In Spitfires, IIRC, these drives provided hydraulic pressure for the undercarriage mechanism (if so equipped) and compressed air which was used to serve some gun combinations, I don’t recall which. These various auxilaries can be seen (or not) poking out of the back ends of the cylinder heads, above the supercharger wheelhouse. The drive gears had male splines or key drives, allowing the auxiliaries to be removed
This discussion thread
http://www.sciencefile.org/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1220532568
shows some images of the arrangement. The last picture shows a head with no auxillary mounted on the inboard drive and an air compressor mounted on the outboard drive.
Not an ideal system but you had to do what you had to do to fit this motor in a streamlined nacelle.
llater,
llamas
The Hurricane bore the brunt of the fighting in the early months. About the only thing it had going for it was that it had a tighter turning radius than the bf-109. Neither the Spitfire nor the Hurricane had an answer for the 109’s cannons. But, so I’ve read, the Spitfire had its machine guns aligned so that the stream of fire would converge closer in. This means they had to get closer to the enemy planes, which means that they landed hits more frequently.
I remember back in the 80s, some Islamo-scum in Lebanon kidnapped an elderly Briton, who had been a Spitfire pilot in the War. When he was finally let go, he got a homecoming celebration which included a flyover by a restored Spitfire.
I’m not British, but I say God bless the memory of all those brave Britons who saved Western civilization, in that long ago summer. We owe so much to so few…
The battle of Britain certainly was a fairly damn good representation of Good vs. Evil, as in it was defensive.. But later, when the British/American terror firestorms raged over German cities, killing hundreds of thousands of men women and children without even slightly decreasing German military production capacity, things got a bit more morally ambiguous.
I’m not saying that England should have damaged nothing in Germany, or refused to bomb, but they could have been more selective and done more damage than they did by resorting to the utterly pointless terror bombing. Even Speer, in his book “Inside the Third Reich”, points out how both the British and American bombers completely ignored some extremely important targets which would have seriously crippled German manufacturing capacity in favour of bombing fairly irrelevant places.
Stephan, a fair point to make. Alas, precision bombing, particularly at night, has always been difficult. With hindsight, the RAF would have been better off building more Mosquitos and fewer Lancasters. It would also, by the way, have meant the death of far fewer airmen.
As for the USAAF bombing campaigns, until the the airforce achieved total air superiority around 1944-45, bomber crews were the equivalent of human clay pigeons, and the casualties were terrible.
Stephan – It’s plain not true that the Allied bombing did not severely impact German production. It’s simplistic (and wrong) to point to increased German output in 1943-4 as proof that the bombing was ineffective. The real reason production went up was that Germany finally went into wartime production mode only after Stalingrad and the gains seen in ’43-44 were primarily due to that. They would have been much greater but for the disruption caused by the bombing campaign. As for the “morality” of the campaign I’m not so inclined to condemn those faced with the reality of fighting an existential war. If here are any moral rules in war they would be to 1) win and 2) do it quickly. Looking back with that in mind I think they did the best they could with what they had.
With regard to aeroplane aesthetics, I find the early spitfires to be slightly weedy looking: however, the griffon engined variants with the wider tail look fantastic. To my mind, the most beautiful British aircraft of the period was the de Havilland Mosquito (any relation, Perry?).
Max Hastings discusses the pros and cons of British strategic bombing in his ‘Bomber Command’, which is well worth a read for an explanation of how technical limitations combined with a ‘political’ desire by the RAF and (especially) the USAAF to demonstrate their status as a distinct military arm led to a policy of area bombing.
It has always struck me as strange how Carl Spaatz managed to escape the (unjust) opprobrium heaped on Harris and LeMay. Was Harris ‘targeted’ by Britain’s Moscow-funded intelligensia? Stalin certainly got good mileage out of the Dresden raid after the war.
Johnathan – you touch on a point that goes to prove my comment above. The daylight bombing campaign’s main contribution to overall victory proved to be the air superiority that was achieved. This was a prerequisite for D-Day just as it was for the Germans contemplating the invasion of England in 1940. While it took the introduction of the Merlin powered Mustang to make it possible – it was the bombers that forced the German fighters to take to the sky that made it happen. Much like the RAF ignored fighter-only sweeps during the Battle of Britain and the Luftwaffe ignore RAF fighter sweeps over France the following year – it takes the threat of bombers (over cities or factories) to compel the defender to fight. To a great extent, the US bombers were but bait – the bait required to draw the Luftwaffe to its destruction.
After the Battle of Britain, Fighter Command was at a bit of a loose end, so it conducted exactly those type of pointless fighter sweeps over France and the Low Countries, which was when the FW190 appeared and shot the Spitfire Mk Vs out of the sky. Douglas Bader was shot down on one of these futile missions. I sometimes think that if a few of those Spitfire squadrons had been sent to Malaya, Singapore might not have fallen, and the war with Japan could have been very different.
As for Bomber Command, it was used to demonstrate why the RAF had to exist as an independent force, to destroy the enemy’s economy. Obviously, it didn’t, but it did take up between a quarter and a third of our economy. If that immense effort had been put into Coastal Command, which was unglamorous but vital, the U Boats might have been defeated in 1942, and D Day could have been in 1943, before the Atlantic Wall was even built. The invasion of Italy, which was always a costly sideshow, would not have been necessary, and the Communist occupation of eastern Europe might have been avoided.
Still, at the moment the British and Americans seem to be having difficulty beating a few thousand tribesmen with home made bombs, so perhaps we should be grateful that they actually managed to defeat Germany and Japan in the end.
One can argue that Hitler should have stopped earlier – for example that British government should have supported German military plots to either prevent his rise to power or to remove him (the plotters were dismissed in British government circles as “reactonaries”, as Hitler was QUITE CORRECTLY seen as Progressive).
Or that Hitler should have been prevented from the military reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936 (the German soldiers actually went in without bullets in their rifles – as Hitler was fearful that an incident would be used as a reason for war before his forces were ready for one).
Or that Hitler should have been stopped over (then) Czechoslovakia – even in 1938 (after the occupation of part of the Czech lands – the areas that included the main defences of the country) German tanks broke down on the way to Prague.
And one can certainly argue that many of the tactical choices made during World War II were wrong (for example ignoring clear evidence of what part of the French border the German concentration was concentrating upon in 1940).
However, what is plain is that HITLER HAD TO BE STOPPED.
People (whether they call themseleves libertarians or not) who say that Britain should have just allowed Hitler to do whatever he wanted (unless he actually invaded Britain itself) are profoundly mistaken – Nazi domination of Europe would have led directly to Nazi domination of Britain especially if Hitler’s regime had been free to import war materials from all over the world.
Remember – “peace with Germany” would have meant that the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy would have been at peace with Hitler also.
“Hitler was an exception”.
Not at all – domination of Europe by Philip II of Spain, or Louis XIV of France, or the French Revolutionary regimes after 1789, or by the Soviets.
Any of these things would have been fatal for Britain – an “Empire of Britian” (with another power controlling the rest of mainland Europe) did not last when various Roman rebel generals tried it – and it would not have worked later either.
Geography dictates that British governments can not just allow all of Europe to be united under a hostile regime – and the above mentioned regimes (being tyrannies) would, of course, be hostile (however much English or Bristish governments tried to be friends with them).
As for “isolationism” for the United States – it depends on the case.
Certainly to say (as so many libertarians do) that the correct policy for the United States would have been to let the Communists take over the Republic of Korea is profoundly wrong (in both senses of the word “wrong” – wrong in practical terms, and wrong in moral terms).
It astonishes me that some people can not see that.
About a year ago I had the honor of caring for a patient who had been one of the Americans to head over and sign up with the RAF to fly, prior to the U.S. entry into the war. He was a Spitfire pilot until 1942, when he came home to fly bombers over the Pacific for his own country.
After sharing my gratitude with him, I asked him what it was like to fly the Spitfire.
“Like flying a poem,” he answered.
I did a review of a book about the Spitfire here a while back, and I recall two facts that are pertinent to some of the above comments.
(1) Another huge advantage the Hurricane had, especially in 1940, was that it was easier and cheaper to make than the Spitfire. Spitfires were more complicated to make, and it took a while for the production process to really get into its stride.
(2) The other Hurricane fact-stroke-claim was that it killed a lot of German airplanes because it was less good than the Spitfire, and was therefore used against the bombers, while the Spitfires fought the fighter escorts, hence the rather flattering (to the Hurricane) Hurricane/Spitfire kill ratio. Don’t know if that’s entirely right, but I remember reading such claims and noting them in my review.
I recently saw a TV documentary about the amazing Polish 303 Squadron, and I think they flew Hurricanes. If so, interesting. This strongly suggests that a great pilot in a good aircraft is way better than a poor pilot (as too many under-trained BoB Brits were, alas) in a great aircraft.
The Poles were given a big nod in the Battle of Britain movie, but were presented as Keystone Pilots – brave, enthusiastic, ignorant of the virtues of radio silence, and liable to be mistaken for Germans if shot down and captured by south of England farming yokels with pitchforks, ho ho. Barry Foster, who played their Squadron Leader in the movie, treated them as badly behaved children whom he was obliged to indulge.
The TV show I saw said they were true Top Guns, the best of the best At first their desk-bound British Wing Commander (station commander?) didn’t believe their claims. So he got into a plane and went up to see for himself. When he got back, he said: F**k me (or the 1940 equivalent) it’s true, they really are as good as they say they are. I.e. the best in the RAF at that time.
But at least they got a semi-respectful mention in that movie. No Poles were allowed to march in the London victory parade of 1945. None. So the TV documentary said. The Government didn’t want to upset Stalin.
The parade was in 1946 not 1945, and according to Wikipedia they didn’t invite a lot of the Poles, but did invite Polish Air veterans. But they refused out of solidarity with the spurned Poles to join in. Ergo, no Poles at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Victory_Parade_of_1946
That was not the story told on the television.
Comments?
Sean O’Callaghan wrote:
‘Much like the RAF ignored fighter-only sweeps during the Battle of Britain and the Luftwaffe ignore RAF fighter sweeps over France the following year – it takes the threat of bombers (over cities or factories) to compel the defender to fight.’
True in ’41 and ’42, but by ’43 and ’44, the RAF learned some excellent lessons from the campaigns in North Africa and the Far East and began fielding some awesome ground-attack variants. Beginning with the Hurribomber, a ground-attack Hurricane with enough firepower to be really useful in air-to-air combat, and ending up with bristling monsters like a fully-equipped Typhoon or Tempest, the RAF was able to conduct fighter sweeps over much of northern Europe that forced the Germans to take serious countermeasures.
That’s one reason that many German military trains included flak cars, and road convoys included armored vehicles specifically adapted for flak use – because one of these cannon-equipped ground-attack aircraft could stop a train or a tank dead in its tracks. A fully-armed Typhoon could fire a rocket salvo equivalent to the full broadside of a naval destroyer, follow up with 800 rounds of 20mm cannon shells, and then drop 2x 1000# bombs on the flaming wreckage. The Luftwaffe never really developed this sort of ground-attack capability, and were thus confined to ‘tip-and-run’ attacks over the UK that did little more than alarm the populace.
My father was born in Dordrecht, in the Netherlands. He would tell of the day in October 1944 when the local German army HQ was attacked solely by rocket-firing Typhoons, which completely destroyed the building and killed over 100 German officers. Not a bad outcome for a fighter sweep.
llater,
llamas
IIamas – Agreed, the ground attack aircraft in ’43-’45 were lethal. But as you yourself say, they were countered by ground defenses (guns), not fighter interception, and therefore did not contribute significantly to the destruction of the Luftwaffe (logistics excepted). Your note does point to another area where the bombing campaign affected war productivity though – in diverting production to air defence. In 1944, two million soldiers and civilians were employed in this rather than at the front or in the factories. Albert Speer estimated that 30% of heavy gun, 20% of heavy ammunition, 33% of optical instruments, and 50% of electronic production went to air defence. Without the reality of allied bombing all this (and more) would have made it to the eastern front…with catastrophic results (for us).
I think the thing about the Hurricance v Spitfire debate is that in 1940 the Spitfire was indeed somewhat better than the Hurricane as a fighter, but that the Hurricane had little development potential. In 1940 it was as good a fighter as it would ever be, whereas the Spitfire had bags of potential. Not that that didn’t stop the Hurricane being produced until 1944 mind you. Sometimes on wartime aircraft just seemed to be churned out because the production line had been set up. The Curtiss P40 was a similar case, also produced until 1944 despite being well outclassed by the Mustang and Thunderbolt.
The Hurricane was a lot cheaper to build than the Spitfire. A lot cheaper – like £40K a copy vs £80K a copy, IIRC.
The Hurricane was a lot easier and cheaper to repair, due to its more-mature construction techniques. It was also somewhat-more-robust, especially against cannon-armed fighters, since large areas of its structure were fabric-skinned – which won’t set off a cannon shell fuse. The stressed-skin structure of the Spitfire, while stronger, would not only set off a cannon shell, but also took a lot longer to repair if the pilot were fortunate enough to get it home.
They kept building Hurricanes (and a lot of other aging models) because there’s a lot of places where you don’t need the very best fighter aircraft – any decent fighter will do, and the Hurricane proved itself quite adaptable to the ground-attack and other roles as well as being a pretty good fighter still. In places like North Africa and the Far East, where the enemy’s air power was already marginal or outmatched, Hurricanes (and P40s and P47s and F4s and a number of other older models) did the job quite nicely. I believe the Indian Air Force used Hurricanes almost exclusively as their first-line fighters, and they did very well indeed.
llater,
llamas
I don’t think the Spitfire was that expensive, the figure which sticks in my mind is £5000, the sort of money you are quoting would have got you a Lancaster.
I believe the most expensive American fighter was the P38 Lightning, but then it did have two engines.
I take your point that there are places where less good fighters could still do good work, but it seems to me to have been more down to an inability to manage the manufacturing processes. By 1944 Hawker were churning out Typhoons, so it is odd that the Hurricane line was still going at such a late date, and the same goes for the P40. The effort of manufacturing Hurricanes and P40s must have been much the same as manufacturing Typhoons or Mustangs, and you are left with a much better aeroplane for your money.