Top 10 British Fighter Aircraft of World War 2

Britain’s survival in World War 2 depended on air power.

At the cutting edge were high-performance fighter planes, dishing out destruction to Axis intruders and supporting Allied operations worldwide. As well as the svelte Spitfire and the rather more homely Hurricane, there were a gaggle of other types, each boasting different engineering solutions to the demanding problem of creating an aeroplane that can blow other aeroplanes out of the sky.

This is piston-engines only - we’re saving the Meteor jet for another story. Here are the Top 10 British Fighter Aircraft of World War 2:

10: Gloster Gladiator

From an earlier generation than the Spitfire and Hurricane, despite predating the latter by only 14 months, the Gladiator proved immensely plucky. The Gladiator biplane was little more than a convenient stop-gap to keep up the numbers until the Hurricane and Spitfire came on stream in sufficient quantity, so it was released for export at a fairly early date.

The Gladiator pops up in an unusual number of imbalanced conflicts far from its home where it was forced to operate in the face of numeric and technological superiority – invariably heroically and to great propaganda value – thus pithily illustrating the general experience of the biplane fighter in the Second World War.

The Gladiator stoically defied the odds with the RAF against the Italians over Malta. More prosaically, when operated in numbers against a similarly equipped enemy it performed excellently. Over Africa it clashed regularly with the Fiat CR.42 biplane, which, though slightly faster, did not handle as well as the Gloster.

Despite being the RAF’s last biplane fighter, it was also that service’s first fighter to sport an enclosed cockpit. Not many aircraft have been simultaneously in the vanguard of development while also totally obsolete. Despite it being such a dated design, it scored 304 victories in RAF service.

9: Martin-Baker MB5

Martin-Baker proposed a Rolls-Royce Griffon-powered version of their failed MB3 (the MB4), but the Air Ministry favoured a more thorough redesign, and the MB5 was the result. A fair contender for the best British piston-engined fighter ever flown, the MB5 was well-armed with four 20mm cannon, was very fast, and easy to maintain.

Flight trials proved it to be truly exceptional, with a top speed of 460 mph (740 km/h), brisk acceleration and docile handling. Its cockpit layout set a gold standard that the boffins at the RAF testing site Boscombe Down recommended should be followed by all piston-engined fighters.

The only thing the MB5 lacked was good timing. It first flew two weeks before the Allied invasion of Normandy. Appearing at the birth of the jet age, with readily available Spitfires and Tempests, both of which were themselves excellent fighters, there was never a particularly compelling case for producing the slightly better MB5.

The MB5 must be included in this debate as it boasted the following: better range and armament than any Spitfire mark; slightly higher top speed, better range and better ceiling than the post-war Sea Fury; better manoeuvrability than post-war Hornet, and it was also cheaper and flew earlier.

8: Boulton Paul Defiant

Opinions vary on the Defiant. Some see it as one of the worst fighters of World War 2; others regard it as a very well-designed aircraft servicing a flawed concept – that, as a bomber destroyer, it only needed rear-facing guns. Some even argue that it was the victim of a conspiracy led by RAF bigwigs Keith Park and Hugh Dowding.

The Defiant had one spectacular day of success over Dunkirk on May 29, 1940, with 39 (or perhaps 38) claimed victories, but it was soon found wanting and after heavy casualties in the Battle of Britain, both squadrons were withdrawn.

The Defiant then found work as a night fighter, a role for which it was far better suited. It was a top scorer as a night fighter in the Blitz of 1940/41 until the development of on-board radar, where its single-engined layout precluded effective adaptation.

Nonetheless, on its day of days, Nicholas Cooke and his air gunner, Albert Lippert, claimed eight victories plus two shared – an RAF record. This may be a controversial aircraft to include, but with 1064 built and 148 aerial victories, it would be remiss not to. The Boulton Paul Defiant was a brilliantly engineered answer to what may have been the wrong question.

7: Westland Whirlwind

Extremely fast, armed to the teeth with four 20mm cannon in the nose, and featuring a wealth of cutting-edge technologies, the twin-engined Whirlwind was spectacular in many ways. It arrived too late to fight in the Battle of Britain, with Whirlwind unit 263 Squadron far from the fight in Scotland.

The Whirlwind was a brilliant design by ‘Teddy’ Petter (who would later create the Canberra and Gnat). Advanced features included Fowler flaps, leading edge intakes, retractable tailwheel, pure monocoque rear fuselage, automatic slats, tail acorn, bubble canopy and the aforementioned noseful of autocannon.  

It suffered developmental problems and delays, was politically awkward and used the Peregrine I engine. The Rolls-Royce Peregrine was a liquid-cooled V12, good for 885 hp (660 kW). As the Merlin was the priority, the Peregrine was cancelled after a relatively small number were built.

The Whirlwind was hard to defend as the effort to make a twin-engined aircraft was so much greater than a single, and unlike the two-seat Mosquito or Beaufighter it could not be easily adapted into a radar-equipped night fighter or carry a substantial number of bombs. Despite only 116 being made, it was certainly one of the most capable fighters of its time, especially at low-level.

6: Hawker Typhoon

Intended as a replacement for both Hawker’s own supremely successful Hurricane and the Spitfire, the new Hawker F18/37 airframe was sensibly ordered with two (brand new) engine options: the Vulture from Rolls-Royce and Sabre from Napier, named the Tornado and Typhoon respectively.

Both offered power in the 2000 hp class and in the event one were to prove unsuccessful the programme could go ahead using the other. Unfortunately, both proved to be, at best, highly problematic. The Sabre proved woefully unreliable and prone to catastrophic failure.

The Vulture was worse still and quickly discarded. Nonetheless the heavy and complicated Sabre’s reliability was appalling. Despite being the first British fighter with a genuine 400mph capability, and eventually possessed of a fearsome reputation as a ground attack fighter (a role, significantly, for which it had never been intended) the Typhoon caused RAF pilots a great deal of problems.

If this were a list of fighter-bombers or ground attack aircraft, the Typhoon would likely enjoy a higher position, but as it failed in its original requirement as an interceptor it only reaches number 6. No other major combat type used by the British Commonwealth caused so much heartache.

5: Bristol Beaufighter

The Bristol Beaufighter was a fighter conversion of the Bristol Beaufort. The enormous structural strength and power of the Beaufort made it appropriate for this modification, and the outcome was a tough and versatile combat aircraft, that performed with distinction in a variety of roles.

With a formidable arsenal combined with a stack of ammo, the Beaufighter was ferociously well-armed: the weight of ammunition carried was greater than that of any other in its class. It carried 808 pounds (367 kg) of ammunition, around four times more than rival French and Soviet designs and around 250 pounds (114 kg) more than the nearest US equivalent.

The Beaufighter had the firepower and ammunition capacity to excel in knocking out larger aircraft. This was good news for the Beaufighter, as tangling with more agile single-engined fighters was a far dicier occupation. The bulk of its victories were over larger multi-engined aircraft: it destroyed 350 Ju 88s and Ju 188s, and 230 Heinkel He 111s.

Though the quoted figure has often been lower in the past, according to recent research by Eddie Rippeth, the likely number of air-to-air victories by RAF Beaufighters was around 965, making it the fourth highest-scoring Royal Air Force fighter in history.

4: De Havilland Mosquito

A dazzling combination of speed, firepower and survivability, the Mosquito was a twin-engined combat aircraft of unparalleled versatility. Its sleek low-drag configuration, excellent Merlin engines and lightweight wood composites contributed to the aircraft’s incredibly high speed.

A wooden composite was used for the entire airframe, which not only offered strength at a very low weight cost, it also contributed to the streamlining as it required no rivets. The Mosquito started with a radical, controversial idea: a bomber so fast it could dispense with defensive gun turrets.

Its performance was so stellar that a fighter version was inevitable. It was as a night fighter that the Mosquito was particularly outstanding, its vicious armament of machineguns and cannon combined with an airborne radar, meant the night offered little safety for Axis bombers.

Facing the prospect of defeat, in 1944 Germany unleashed a horrific vengeance weapon on England, the V-1 cruise missile, nicknamed the ‘Doodlebug’. This pulse-jet-powered missile was a menace and killed thousands of British civilians. As a killer of V-1s, the Mosquito was second only to the Tempest, having the speed to catch and down more than 600 of them, thereby saving thousands of civilian lives. It also did a great many other impressive things in other roles, but as this article is about fighters we have stuck to its air-to-air achievements.

3: Hawker Hurricane

The first RAF aircraft capable of speeds in excess of 300mph, the Hurricane first flew in 1935. It was a relatively cautious design that combined proven construction methods with modern ideas, like a retractable undercarriage and an enclosed cockpit with a sliding canopy.

Of massive significance, the Hurricane was the most numerous RAF fighter during the Battle of Britain, when Britain’s survival was under threat from Nazi Germany. When the battle started, the Royal Air Force had only nineteen Spitfire squadrons, compared to a rather healthier thirty squadrons of Hurricane. In the Battle of Britain, Hurricanes achieved 656 victories.

Though soon eclipsed by higher-performance fighters, the Hurricane proved versatile and adapted itself well to myriad other roles, including ‘tank-busting’ with a 40mm cannon. In RAF service alone, the Hurricane achieved around 4540 aerial victories, making it one of the most important fighter aircraft of all time. The Hurricane was also used on aircraft carriers, as the Sea Hurricane, a task it proved better suited to than the Spitfire’s Seafire variant.

The Hurricane fought across the world from the deserts of Africa to the icy Eastern Front. When production ended in 1944, over 14,000 had been made (2750 of which were made by Gloster).

2: Supermarine Spitfire

With around 5950 victories in RAF service alone, the Spitfire is in the pantheon of the best fighter aircraft in the history of air warfare. It started the war as a strong contender for the greatest fighter in service, and as a massively transformed machine, was a still a viable candidate at the point of Allied victory in 1945.

It first flew in 1936, and it deeply impressed the first RAF personnel who encountered this futuristic machine. Whereas other aircraft had a linin-fabric covering wood or thin metal structure, here was a metal-skinned aeroplane, with an enclosed cockpit and a retractable undercarriage. It was clear another age had arrived or was about to.

The Spitfire fought on every front, saved Britain in its darkest hour and was built in greater numbers than any other British aircraft before or since. It was a dream to fly, and a terrifying opponent for any hostile pilot facing it. Fast, reliable and with terrific manoeuvrability it was a superb aircraft.

It served and remained in production throughout the war, the final versions being greatly bigger, faster and with far superior firepower to the first examples. It excelled as an interceptor, fighter and reconnaissance aircraft, and was undeniably a war-winning weapon of massive historical importance.

1: Hawker Tempest

The road to the Hawker Tempest was a long and appropriately tempestuous one, but the result was probably the best British fighter aircraft that fought in the war. The burly Tempest was a massive beast, with the bulk of the Hawker Typhoon’s worst flaws ironed out, many thanks to a new thin wing.

V-1 would meet its nemesis with the Tempest, which, in a valiant effort, became the most effective fighter against the V-1, destroying a total of 800 or so.