Hurricane I vs Bf 110: 1940 [Paperback]

The Hawker Hurricane was the most numerous British fighter in the Battle of Britain. The Messerschmitt Bf 110, meanwhile, began the battle with a fearsome reputation that became tarnished in the skies over Britain. Both get less attention from most military histories than the British Spitfire and the German Bf 109E. This book is an informative corrective.

This title describes the Hurricane's development from the Hawker Fury biplane fighter. The Hurricane has been criticized for its wooden fixed-pitch propeller, fabric-covered wings and rear fuselage, all seeming outdated by 1940. The author argues that, had the British waited to get everything perfect, the Hurricane would not have been available in large enough numbers to form the backbone of RAF fighter defense in the Battle of Britain. Instead, the British wisely retrofitted metal wings and constant-speed propellers as these became available. The Hurricane stood in the breach while the more complex Spitfire design was worked up. For all this, Hurricane pilots had to suffer "Spitfire snobbery," in which shot-down German pilots often claimed to have fallen victim to Spitfires, when it was actually Hurricanes that made the kill.

The Bf 110 swept everything before it in Poland, Norway, France and the Low Countries, benefiting from its high speed and strong armament. So long as it was used on "hunt" missions, the Bf 110 was dangerous. In the Battle of Britain, Goering insisted on using Bf 110's for close-support bomber escort, a role which exposed its lack of maneuverability and slow acceleration. Bf 110 pilots would sometimes try to protect themselves by forming into a "Lufberry" circle but, as author Tony Holmes points out, Hurricane pilots often used skillful diving attacks to pick off 110's in these defensive formations.

Yet it was the British, much more than the Germans, who suffered from outdated tactics in 1940. Author Tony Holmes gives an insightful view to the problem of RAF doctrine, which forced pilots to fly in cumbersome three-plane "vic" formations. Superficially, the formation made some sense. The RAF recognized that its fighters' .303 Browning guns lacked "punch" for bringing down bombers; hence the desire to concentrate the fire of three aircraft. But the "vic" formation was vulnerable to fighter attack from above or behind, which helps to explain why the Germans called the British squadron formation, with four 3-plane vics, Idiotenreihen, or "rows of idiots," ripe for bouncing from their own flexible, battle-tested "rotte" finger-four formations.

You did not want to get into the Bf 110's own gunsights, with four machine-guns and two cannon. Pat Pattle, indisputably one of the RAF's greatest aces, was killed by Bf 110's while flying a Hurricane during the Greek campaign in 1941. A Hurricane could not follow the 110 in a dive; even with their own diving airspeed worked up to 400 mph, Hurricane pilots would watch 110s speed away when the Germans "ran for the deck." Used to its best advantage, with "dive and zoom" tactics, the Bf 110 accounted for many Hurricanes - and Spitfires.

This title also gives a thorough background on the training programs for Hurricane and Bf 110 pilots. The training chapter runs a little dull, but its relevance is manifest since pilot training is at least as important as aircraft design, and probably more so.

This title is highly readable, supplemented by informative diagrams and photos, and makes good use of captions to convey additional insights. It is full of the vital, fascinating "stuff" of aerial warfare - technology, weapons, tactics, flying skill, and raw chance. All in all, this is a good read, and one of the best of the "duel" series I have so far encountered.

This is the first of this series of "duel" books that I've read. First, I must echo what previous reviewers have written. This book is faultness, unless one can complain that it ended too soon! The photos, graphical layout, large number of brief ace biographies and excerpts of their combat stories - all are superb! I am staggered by the quality of this!

Most Battle of Britain histories tend to focus on the Spitfire vs. Bf 109 angle, so a volume - particularly a well-written and well-packaged volume such as this one - that covers the much-less-covered duel between the British Hurricane I fighter and the German Bf 110 is a welcome diversion for most readers interested in the Second World War. Furthermore, the author provides the added benefit of discussing the aerial battle over France in May-June 1940 in some detail, as well. Thus, this volume in the Duel series assesses these two famous aircraft in combat between March and November 1940. The author concludes the Hurricane fighter won the duel against the Bf 110 hands-down, inflicting about a 4-1 loss rate. All in all, this is a pleasant volume that fills a niche and which delivers an objective and non-controversial assessment.

The author begins his narrative with a 10-page section on the design and development of each aircraft in the interwar period; the Hurricane entered RAF service in December 1937 and the Bf 110 entered Luftwaffe service in September 1938. The RAF wanted the Hurricane as a fighter it could produce in bulk quantities, compared to the Spitfire, which ensured that it had almost 500 on hand at the start of the war. On the other hand, the Luftwaffe had difficulty figuring out exactly what role the Bf 110 would fulfill - heavy fighter, fighter destroyer, long-range escort - and did not rush into large-scale production until after the war started. The author spends another 10 pages on the technical specifications of each aircraft and provides color plates for each. In many respects, the two aircraft were a mis-match; the Bf 110 weighed twice as much as the Hurricane and was more heavily armed, but it was far less maneuverable. The 13-page section on the Strategic Situation is truly excellent and includes four maps depicting Bf 110 bases in France and RAF fighter bases (this is the kind of detail often missing from other Osprey aviation titles). The 12-page section on pilot training is also very good and the author notes the high-quality of pre-war Luftwaffe pilots as well as the minimal aerial gunnery training afforded to RAF pilot aspirants in the summer of 1940.

The 18-page section on combat covers the Battle of France and the Battle of Britain. This section is very well-written and included several combat diagrams and maps, as well as a stunning battle scene of a Hurricane flaming a Bf 110 (I believe this is one of the most realistic aerial battle scenes that I have ever seen in an Osprey volume). In short, the Bf 110s were virtually annihilated over Britain, losing 223 of 315 aircraft committed. The only section of the volume I found a bit weak were in the analysis and aftermath sections, which correctly note the Hurricane's triumph over the Bf 110 but which avoid probing too deeply into the equation. Clearly, the Hurricane's victory in the duel was based upon its superior maneuverability, but the author makes clear that Bf 110 crews quickly realized that they could not dogfight with the Hurricanes. Instead, the Bf 110s adopted a defensive circle tactic that the more experienced Hurricane pilots learned to break - although that was probably well beyond the ability of the hastily-trained RAF pilots who barely knew how to hit aerial targets. Furthermore, the rigid vic-formations used by the RAF in the first half of 1940 clearly negated many of the Hurricane's maneuverability advantage. My point is that the author has talked around several issues - the Hurricane was more maneuverable but based upon his own narrative, restrictive RAF tactics and inadequately trained RAF pilots seriously undermined the Hurricane's main advantage. So how did the Hurricanes defeat the Bf 110s? Based upon the table provided, ten RAF Hurricane pilots shot down 58 of the 236 Bf 110s destroyed in the Battle of Britain, but who destroyed the other 178 aircraft? Unfortunately the answers to these questions just aren't here. If the author had gone into more detail on a couple of actions, it might have been possible to gain more insight into how a poorly-trained force flying a better fighter defeated a better-trained force flying an inadequate fighter. Given the overall poor Luftwaffe performance over Britain, many of the Bf 110's flaws could probably be traced to operational-level mistakes and assigning the aircraft to missions to which it was destined to fail (just as the Luftwaffe would try and turn its fighters into bombers at certain points in the war). Given the Bf 110s overall decent performance in North Africa, Russia and as a night fighter, an assessment of its failure based primarily on technical grounds is a possible over-stretch.

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