Hawker Hurricane

Hawker Hurricane, a replica of the fighter plane from the Second World War, commemorates its designer, Sir Sydney Camm (1893-1966), who had grown up in Windsor, one of 11 siblings, in a small terraced house in Alma Road.

Sydney Camm was educated at the Royal Free School in Bachelors Acre. As a boy, he designed model aeroplanes and sold these to Eton boys under cover of darkness. In the First World War he joined the Martinsyde Aircraft Company, and in 1922 moved to the Hawker Engineering Company in Kingston, becoming their Chief Designer. He was appointed CBE in 1941 and knighted in 1953.

This replica Hawker Hurricane was Camm’s design and bears the markings of Marshal of the RAF Sir John Grandy, one time Constable and Governor of Windsor Castle. The Hurricane first flew in 1935 and entered RAF service in 1937. Rugged, easily repaired, with widely spaced undercarriage wheels for stability on rough terrain, Hurricanes flew in almost every theatre of the war. Over 14,000 were built. Only a few remain airworthy today but replicas such as this remind us of the considerable contribution that they, and their designer, made to the war effort in 1940.