"I tend to give an example of the bulldog and the greyhound, the Hurricane being the bulldog and the greyhound being the Spitfire. One's a sort of tough working animal and the other one's a sleek fast dog. But I think their characteristics were comparable to the dog world…

If anything the Hurricane was slightly easier. It wasn't as fast and didn't have the rate of climb. But during the actual Battle of Britain itself what really evolved was that the Hurricanes would attack the German bomber formations and the Spitfires, because of their extra capability of climbing, they would go up and attack the German fighter escort. But in the earlier stages I found that we were getting involved with both bombers and fighters when we were flying Hurricanes."

<<back