While many of the changes that took place over the production life were to upgrade the performance or to address problems, some were due to suit war situations for example, while Mark I aircraft burned glycol, Mark II machines stepped down to a 70-30 glycol ratio to ease on the consumption of this precious strategic material. Mark I machines, for example, were equipped with Merlin C engines and two-blade wooden propellers by the time the Mark V variant was available in the mid-1940s, the powerplant had been upgraded to Merlin 32 engines that directed power to Rotol four-blade propellers. Although the general appearance would remain the same throughout the long production life of this design, the details would evolve throughout the years. Ww2dbaseGiven that the design had its roots in the Fury biplanes, these new fighters actually resembled much more like their WW1-vintage forefathers than their WW2-era contemporaries. About one year into the war, on, 2,309 were delivered. When the war began in Europe in Sep 1939, 497 were delivered. The order came in Jun 1936, for 600 machines, and it was not until later that month that the "Hurricane" name was made official. Hawker was so confident of this design that it had geared their factories to produce 1,000 units before the British military placed its first order. Hawker officially submitted the design to the British Air Ministry on 4 Sep, and the prototype of what was to be named Hurricane took its first flight from Brooklands in Surrey, England, United Kingdom a year later on, with George Bulman in the cockpit. In Aug 1934, the team submitted the design to the Air Ministry, and it was indeed well received, so much so that within a month the ministry would request British aircraft manufacturing firms to compete for a new specification, F.36/34, whose requirements were nearly identical to the capabilities of this new aircraft design from Camm's team. His design team located at Canbury Park Road in Kingston upon Thames near London, England, United Kingdom initially named this project "Interceptor Monoplane to F.5/34" (the latter being an Air Ministry specification reference number). Ww2dbaseAircraft designer Sydney Camm of Hawker Aviation began working on a monoplane version of the Fury biplane fighter starting in 1934, knowing that the British Air Ministry had interest in such a development.
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