HAWKER HURRICANE MK. I - RAF

Historical Note:        The Hawker Hurricane, first flew on November 6 1935, was the first operational Royal Air Force (R.A.F) aircraft capable of a top speed in excess of 300 mph. A total of 1,715 Hurricanes flew with Fighter Command during the period of the Battle, far in excess of all other British fighters combined. Having entered service a year before the Spitfire, the Hurricane was "half-a-generation" older, and was markedly inferior in terms of speed and climb. However, the Hurricane was a robust, maneuverable aircraft capable of sustaining fearsome combat damage before write-off; and unlike the Spitfire, it was a wholly operational, go-anywhere do-anything fighter by July 1940. It is estimated that its pilots were credited with four-fifths of all enemy aircraft destroyed in the period July-October 1940.

The Mk I variant of the Hawker Hurricane was produced between 1937 and 1939. First production version, with fabric-covered wings, a wooden two-bladed, fixed-pitch propeller, powered by the 1,030-hp (768-kW) Rolls-Royce Merlin Mk II or III engines and armed with eight .303-inch Browning machine guns.

Although the use of this number of guns sounds impressive, the fact is that this relatively small calibre armament was more suited to shooting down the wood/canvas machines of the First World War. It was relatively common during the Battle of Britain for the (metal) German planes to be struck by a surprisingly high numbers of .303 bullets but still return safely to base. The use of a smaller number of larger calibre guns would have been far more effective and this was rectified in later versions of the Hurricane. Hurricanes built under license by SABCA in Belgium featured four 12.7mm FN-Browning guns instead of the .303 inch armament.

Scale:    1:28
W/S:     15.7       inches
Lgth:     10.9     inches

Item Number:    TMC-MXFBH                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Price:    $249.95