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Royal Air Force (RAF) - Hawker Hurricane Mk. IIC - LF686 - Air and Space Smithsonian - Udvar Hazy Center - July 29th, 2009 1341 RT CRP

Royal Air Force (RAF) - Hawker Hurricane Mk. IIC - LF686

 

Smithsonian description:

Hawker Chief Designer Sydney Camm's Hurricane ranks with the most important aircraft designs in military aviation history. Designed in the late 1930s, when monoplanes were considered unstable and too radical to be successful, the Hurricane was the first British monoplane fighter and the first British fighter to exceed 483 kilometers (300 miles) per hour in level flight. Hurricane pilots fought the Luftwaffe and helped win the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940.

 

This Mark IIC was built at the Langley factory, near what is now Heathrow Airport, early in 1944. It served as a training aircraft during the World War II in the Royal Air Force's 41 OTU.

 

During the late 1960s, the Smithsonian arranged to trade a stock Hawker Typhoon to the Royal Air Force Museum at Hendon in exchange for Hawker Hurricane LF686. An RAF transport hauled the fighter to the U. S. in 1969. Specialists at the Garber Facility began restoring the airplane in 1989 and finished the project eleven years later. The fighter is on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.

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Uploaded on August 2, 2009
Taken on July 29, 2009