By Frederick A. Johnsen
It was a Hawker Hurricane and a Supermarine Spitfire that drew crowds at AirVenture. See what they did there — Hawker alliterated its name with Hurricane and Supermarine selected Spitfire.
And ever since these two consonant-conserving fighters labored heroically in the Battle of Britain, a debate has raged over which one did more to win that epic struggle. One British wartime pilot later opined that it was precisely the mix of both types that made the Royal Air Force formidable. During a Warbirds in Review session at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2021, pilots who fly both aircraft today described them to a rapt audience.
Warren Pietsch, EAA 376495, who flies for the Dakota Territory Air Museum in Minot, North Dakota, said the Hurricane and Spitfire were designed for an interceptor mission much more localized than that of American long-range fighters. As a result, the British fighters carried less gasoline and might have an endurance of about an hour. This resulted in numerous home defense sorties in a day during the Battle of Britain.
Warren said before he first flew the Hurricane he “didn’t expect a lot out of the airplane,” but he was impressed with its performance. “It’s an antique,” he explained. Designed in 1935, the Hawker Hurricane built on the company’s long line of British fighters stretching back to World War I. It has a thick airfoil mated to a fuselage that is part steel-tube-and-fabric, part wood, and part aluminum. It is relatively light weight, and with that fat wing it gets airborne quickly, Warren explained.
The Spitfire, first flown in 1936, comes from a racing pedigree and is an all-aluminum fighter with a streamlined wing. The Spitfire at EAA AirVenture flew combat with Polish and French pilots assigned to the RAF, and it was over Normandy about a week after the invasion in June 1944.
The Hurricane displayed in the Warbirds area was one of several hundred built by Canadian Car and Foundry for the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1942. An engine stoppage put it in a swamp in Newfoundland until rescued many years later, Warren said.
This Hurricane wears the desert camouflage of an aircraft flown by an American volunteer with the RAF in North Africa. L.C. Wade left Texas to fly with the Royal Air Force before the United States entered the war. Wade, both dapper and durable, cut a wide swath as a fighter ace with 23 confirmed kills, and possibly as many as 25. His life ended abruptly when, in January 1944 in Foggia, Italy, he made a low roll in a Spitfire and caught a wingtip on the ground.
Warren Pietsch said at the Dakota Territory museum, “We try to put 30 to 50 hours a year on the airplanes.” That’s good for enthusiasts who get to see aircraft like the Hurricane and Spitfire at events like EAA AirVenture.