Well the Hurricane is the savior of the civilised world, It served on all fronts and in all Theaters it shot down more enemy aircraft in the BoB that all the other aircraft put together. However it was less manuverable than the Spitfire and 109. The only advatage it had was it could turn tighter than the 109 and take far more battle damage. Note that it could only TURN tighter i was out classed in every other way.

Firstly, Whitey - I've heard this (about the Germans). They obviously had a healthier respect for the Spit.

Secondly, Wood - What do you consider the underpin of maneouvrability (obviously there's turn rate, roll rate, climb rate, stall speed etc). In the Pacific, it was generally agreed, the great advantage the Zero had (even when the U.S. planes were more heavily armoured, heavily armed, much the same power) was it's ability to out-turn the Yanks (and outclimb).
It seems, by all accounts, that the only way they could overcome this advantage is by tactics (two planes working together to trap the Zero).
Wouldn't this, seemingly single, advantage of turn-rate be the real decider in a dogfight (with equally matched pilots) ???

The main reason that the Spitfire was still in front line service longer than the Hurrican was because the designers were able to develop the Spitfire continually to keep it equal to, or better than the enemy aircraft it was facing. The Hurrican was designed using the same methods Hawker had used to produce it's long line of pre-war bi-plane fighters and so was not as easily updated.
The Spitfire was the only allied fighter to be in production for the entire duration of WW2 and the last Spitfires were twice as heavy and more than twice as powerful as those that served in the summer of 1940.
After the Hurrican, hawker went on to produce some exellent fighters like the Typhoon and Tempest.

IMHO and personal preference, the Spitfire is a much better fighter. i don't even ever recall being shot down while flying in my spitfire in a SimV dogfight 8)

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In general, each fighter has it's advantages and disadvantages... "in real life". 

Undeniably, the Hurricane had the "numbers" in BoB, but it was a dated plane when compared to the Spit, and later fighters.

I hesitate to draw conclusions between simulation aircraft and their real life counterparts, especially those made for Flight Simulator - not som much because of the intentions of the simulation aircraft builder, but rather, the simulation itself.

One of the computer magazines (Computer Pilot or PC Pilot, I forget which) has been running a series of plane vs plane - comparing the different planes, say a FW-190, between the simulations(CFS/Jane's etc...) and the  "real" counterparts.  THere are "significant" differences between the simulation versions brought out, and of course, the "real" versions - (There are very few pilots left, if any, that have flown both real and simulation versions).

Massively multiplayer games, like Aces High, and Warbirds, simulate the various performance differences between aircraft and versions with a high degree of accuracy - people that HAVE flown both real and simulated versions have commented on such and "maybe" are better gauges of real life performance.

Once thing is certain - you can walk away from a simulated crash....

Spitfires and Hurricanes ....... 'saviors' of the civilized world?

I understand your patriotism, but that's kind of stretching it a bit, don't you think.....? I've always thought that the defeat of the Axis Powers and Imperial Japan was due to the combined Allied effort of Britain, Russia, the U.S., Canada, Australia, (not necessarily in any order) and many others; not forgetting the contributions of the resistance fighters in all the occupied countries!

I doubt Hitler's Nazis ever posed a real lethal threat to the U.S. (he couldn't cross a channel to get to England; how the hell was he going to cross an ocean to get to us?)......by the end of 1941, Russia and England had pretty much stopped all German advances, and by the following summer the U.S. had the Japanese on the defensive, and had already started the island hopping campaign (which culminated, of course, with our 'nuking' them into surrender in '45).

Sure, Spits and Hurri's played their part in winning the war.......as did the Lanc's & Blenheims, and the P-47, 51s, 39's, Warhawks, B-17s, 24's, 29,s, etc., etc.

Now, if you're inferring that the U.S and/or the Americas are uncivilized, that's another matter ........ and also debatable!

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I have a vague recollection of that theory, Brensec.....very interesting! Feel free to expound on that if you want to.......

Here's a different slant on it...

How about the pilot, the flying instructor?

Undoubtably, a weapon is only as good as the person operating it, and the training they've received.

Which in turn leads me to one conclusion...

The Tiger Moth and all its associated training aircraft must have "won" the BofB (if you can really win something in which so much was lost).

Just a thought

Cheers

Charlie

(remove philosophers coat)