Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Which is which?

We're celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain and there will be flypasts by the few remaining aircraft of that generation.  Pride of place of course will go to the Spitfires and Hurricanes - but can you tell them apart?  As a child of the war, I could of course, and still can, although it's not as easy as it was.  In the early days it was simple - Spitfires had rounded ends to their wings, Hurricanes had straight ends.  But then you began to get Hurricanes with round ends, so that didn't work any more. The one definitive way of telling them apart was, and still is, by the canopy - if you can see it. Spitfires have a canopy made of a single piece of perspex, whereas Hurricanes have what I always think of as greenhouse windows - separate individual panes.  It's the one sure way of telling one from t'other.

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