In the book 'Flying the World's Great Aircraft', Robert Stanford Tuck descibes his first encounter with the Hurricane, when he took over command of 257 Sqd. "Strangely enough, I had never been very close to a Hurricane before, let alone sat in the cockpit. Hurricane P4190 sat there on it's wide, sturdy undercarriage, with it's slightly down-sloping nose and humpbacked fuselage giving it a slightly hunched, crouching appearance. I was not very impressed, as it looked like a great sturdy carthorse compared with my Spit, which was like a racing thoroughbred." A few paragraphs later, however, he realtes "In spite of my first-sight impressions of it, as I dived, climbed, looped, rolled, stalled, spun and did everything I knew with it, I became aware of it's virtues. The Hurricane, I decided, was solid and it was obvious that she'd take a lot of punishment. She was as steady as a rock, even going fast downhill, and was a very impressive gun platform, having good forward visibility." And there's this, a couple of pages later, "After this first day's combat with my new Squadron in the Hurricane serialled V6555, code letters DT-A, my first impressions of this magnificent aircraft were completely wiped out, as I realised the sterling qualities of it's handling. It had not a vice in it's whole make-up. It's wonderful visibility over the nose, considering the great Rolls-Royce Merlin engine in front, and it's remarkable steadiness and solidness when the eight machine guns crashed into life made it an absolute delight to fly, but I would have liked more speed. I felt sure that if under heavy attack, it was capable of taking tremendous punishment and this later proved to be the case."
I'm stopping now, my fingers are tired from all that typing, however before I stop I'll add that your Hurricane is looking very nice, bexwh773.