Although it's reputation was never that of the Spitfire, the Hawker Hurricane matched the best aircraft of Britian's enemies just at the moment of her greatest crisis. It was on the Hurricane that the greatest burden of responsibility rested to withstand the onslaughts by Germany, Italy and Japan and to buy time for survival while the arsenels of the West could forge the weapons of vistory. "The Hawker Hurricane" is fully illustrated with over 200 photographs, maps, diagrams and includes comprehensive appendices of Hurricane test flights, production and service.
…covering the development, operational history and postwar history of the aircraft, followed by four appendices covering some technical details, including a comprehensive listing of Hurricane production with rudimentary details of each aircraft. The book is well illustrated with properly captioned black and white photographs. There are also two small colour sections – the first contains seven excellent colour photographs, five of which are Charles Brown images supplied by the RAF Museum. The second colour section contains a small amount of colour profile artwork, and whilst the colour details are vague the detail about stencils is impressive. In fact, details of Hurricane camouflage are hazy throughout – not surprising as this is an area usually covered by specialist publications. The development and operational history details on which the book does focus are excellent, and I found myself surprised on a number of occasions. The evidence of phony ‘presentation’ aircraft at Hawkers Langley facility was a bit of a shock. The text itself is reassuringly analytical in style, unlike the apologetic propaganda style adopted in some Hurricane histories. An excellent book, and sure to be of interest to Hurricane enthusiasts.

Essentially the proto version of the book that keeps beings published and further improved every ten year. This is the 1962 edition. ( )

hardback