strange but true?

read on a board the following:
"
although it did not involve any combat, resulted in about a dozen Romanian fighters taken out of combat.

and

After the Brits gave Hurricanes to the Soviets, it was feared that the Romanian AA gunners will get confused, so Romanian Hurricanes were whidrawn from the front (taken out of combat), and used in flight schools."

Is this true?

The hurries were taken out from frontline duty after Basarbia campaign and the reason I found in several sources was the id from ground - not 100% convinced that was the reason though.

Kinda makes sense, especially from the Romanian pilots perspective- you don't want to ignore what you think is a friendly HurriI with a slower speed and 8 light MGs and instead get an enemy HurriII with higher speed and 4 20mm on your tail...

The ARR Hurricanes were withdrawn from front line service way before the first VVS Hurricane appeared over the front lines.

As for the sentence:
"although it did not involve any combat, resulted in about a dozen Romanian fighters taken out of combat."
The author probably meant to say 'becoming unserviceable' .

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on May 25, 2006 12:03 am

well i it would be logical that brittain would have stopped the supply of spare parts.

the reason for withdraw could also be that germany would have supplied replacements?

(the fins flew with anything they had german russian dutch french and i have no doubt that rumanians could have done the same when needed)

Hi IJ-n,

The Finns had the advantage through out the war of operating from home airfields, with all their attendant support facilities and advantages in serviceability. The Romanians, by contrast, were an expeditionary air force often operating from poorly equipped forward air strips over 1942-43. They tried to use other Allied combat types in 1942, (i.e. PZL23, Potez 63, Blenheim) but their serviceability levels were apparently low.

Cheers,

Sid.

Good point

Well he did say the went on to a training sqaud. So Some should have remained airworthy i guess

Were all hurri part of escadrilla 53? I read that 12 of the 50 ordered were delivered. how many were left when withdrawn?

Yes, all Hurricanes were part of Escadrila 53 vânatoare.

Following the ARR's first campaign, there were 12 Hurricanes left. However, the catch is that there were 3 additional ex-Yugoslav Hurricanes also impressed into ARR service, those made up for the overall losses.

There is a separate thread dealing with Rumanian Hurricanes. You may want to check it for details.

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on May 25, 2006 06:03 pm

from this site WINGS PALETTE, http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww2/f/79


Artist: © Don Greer
Source: 'Romanian Air Force', A Squadron Signal Publications

(orded this one tonight :-} Squadron Signal 6080 - Rumanian Air Force 1938-47)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/089747402...glance&n=283155

thanks! lot of info in those links

Yes, that's my book. Enjoy!

Gen. Dénes

I'll post my reply here since I could not find the designated "Hurricane in ARR service" threrad.
I have no actual evidence, but I've heard a lot of anecdotes about *why* the Hurrcanes were taken out of service, including one where they clamed they were running out of spare parts for the engines, so they had to borrow from the Power torpedo boats, that had the same powerplant. Apparently that compromised both craft, since the transmission was a bit different, so by the end of the war the Powers were running with engines stripped off of captured Zis 3 trucks!
To me the story seems a bit unlikely, but the reason for retiring The "Hurries" might be authentic - since Romania was now at war with Britain, spare parts for the Rolls Royce engines were running low, and a few aircraft had their powerplants canibalised in order to keep others flying, but that was only delaying the inevitable.

I thought they were withdrawn from frontline combat mostly because of their poor performances (In `43 the finns wanted to get rid also of teir 5 or so Hurris so thy proposed them for sale to romanians, but they were not interested), but they served for a while on coastal defence at Black Sea until 1944 (probably there is also a point that in this role the flying hours were fewer and so they were available longer time).

The hurries served on coastal defence untill 1944 ? with what unit and where ?