In aerial combat there are several factors that may affect the outcome of a fight. To win you need superior equipment or tactics, better training, greater experience, or a mixture of these factors. Beyond that there are only intangibles that may affect the result, things such as fighting spirit, aggression, courage and luck, which should not, perhaps, be relied upon for victory.If my time as a Royal Air Force fighter pilot had started 33 years earlier than it did, I could have been flying and fighting in the Battle of Britain in 1940. To have had the best chance of winning and surviving, which of the principal two types of RAF fighter aircraft would I have preferred to have flown, the Hurricane or the Spitfire? Which would you have preferred, if it were you?In addressing that question, I call not only on my background as a "modern" RAF fighter pilot, but also on the privileged time I spent flying both of the contenders during my 11 years with the RAF's Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (BBMF), including Spitfire IIa, P7350, the only surviving airworthy example of the type to have fought in that greatest air battle of all time.
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