Great story. I read once that the Hurricane’s aluminum-and-fabric design enabled World War I veteran factory workers and mechanics to work on them without having to be retrained, freeing up other people to work on the all-metal Spits. In the Battle of Britain, the Hurricanes could take on the bombers while the Spits went after the Messerschmitts. Old England would have been lost without them.
In his autobiography, Adolph Galland mentions the famous quote in which he tells Goering “A squadron of Spitfires”, in answer to the question of what he would like.
He also said that he just said it to irritate Goering as he actually thought the ME-109 was completely equal to the spitfire.
As I understand it, these wonderful planes were manufactured at what today is the Jaguar XJR plant.