Launched by rocket-powered catapult from ships without flight decks, and later flying from escort carriers, the Sea Hurricane and its pilots fought with incredible distinction, as Paul E Eden explained in the March 2014 issue of Aviation News
Considering the bare facts of its creation, the Hawker Sea Hurricane perhaps ought to have been a failure. Several hundred were produced, all of them by conversion from existing airframes and many of the earlier examples from Hurricanes already pretty much worn out from Battle of Britain combat.
The original Sea Hurricane Mk IA had no arrester hook and therefore could not land back aboard ship – although since the Royal Navy could spare no aircraft carriers from which to operate its latest fighter, this fact was purely academic.
The Sea Hurricane brought all the well established qualities of the land-based Hurricane to the Fleet Air Arm (FAA). These included its rugged, easily repairable structure, high performance – certainly compared to the FAA’s two-seat Fairey Fulmar – and fine ground handling; but also its difficult stall, which was hardly ideal for slow-speed manoeuvring around a carrier.
When the Sea Hurricane entered service in March 1941, the questions of approach handling and de…
