Hurricane

ROB THOMASSON · Post by **ROB THOMASSON** » Sun Jan 24, 2010 9:38 am

I read my copy of Loop the other day and saw an article on Hurricane restorations. I went to the website and read the technical bits with interest. The bit on spars got my attention where it said any mark, dink or corrosion pit on the spar over 3 thou rendered it scrap. Now I don't know much about Hurricanes I admit but I can't see any aircraft in squadron service being able to tolerate so little damage.
Armourer tired and cold heaves a belt into place and it catches the spar. "No problem lad, we'll just pop a new wing on! Won't take ten minutes!"
The other bits and brackets apparently were equally accurate but since these things were built on a production line I can't see it happening.
The quote from DeHavilland "A good engineer is someone who can do something for five bob that any damned fool can do for a pound!" springs to mind.
Anyone out there know for certain?
Rob

IanTadd · Post by **IanTadd** » Sun Jan 24, 2010 10:36 am

Just a thought......is it do with avoiding a starting point for fatigue failure?

Bill Fisher · Post by **Bill Fisher** » Sun Jan 24, 2010 2:11 pm

Now the war has ended it seems somebody wan't to make money.

When I was a lad, and Hurricanes were based at Kenley, I suspect the engineering officer burned the book !!

John Brady · Post by **John Brady** » Sun Jan 24, 2010 8:40 pm

Wandering around the restoration hangar at Old Warden last July I examined the structural components of their Hurricane with the eye of a new RV builder who had just done the LAA metalwork course. The rudder (for example) showed all the riveting defects depicted in the book but it was still intact more than 50 years of flying later. So perhaps some things are not as critical as others.
John

G.Dawes · Post by **G.Dawes** » Sun Jan 24, 2010 8:59 pm

The spar and many other structural parts were made up of multifaceted steel tubing rivetted together,8 or 10 facets if I remember. I doubt that there would have been that little tolerance to damage as the tube were slipped over each other ina descending number of tube as the went out to the tips the inner ones were probably about five or six tube and one at the tip. This tubing was impossible to obtain afterward which explains the dearth of Hurricanes to Spitfires, which are now built from data plates.
The Hurricane was very tolerant to battle damage, and Ginger Lacey came home once and really bollocked his airframe Erk about the lousy handling only to have it pointed out to him that there was no fabric behind the cockpit as it had been hit by tracer and had burnt off.
The only plane better at getting home damaged was the Wellington with the multi stress-path geodetic fuselage. This construction was heavy though.

ROB THOMASSON · Post by **ROB THOMASSON** » Mon Jan 25, 2010 9:17 am

Oh I accept the stress raiser point but I think it would be difficult to achieve in wartime. Can someone advise me on the correct way of writing thousands of an inch? I've always written either 5 thou or 0.005 inch. They appear to have crossed these over so it reads 0.005 thou. There again it's a long time sine I went to school!
Rob

Bob F · Post by **Bob F** » Tue Jan 26, 2010 7:13 pm

Rob,

Reckon it should be 0.005".

The 5 thou doesn't really work because the thou does not say what units, i.e. thousands of what? 0.005 inch also does the job.