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by jameshart 1033 days ago
Although they do look similar, there are quite significant differences between a Hurricane and a Typhoon.

A Hurricane has a ~1000hp early Rolls Royce Merlin engine and a top speed of about 350mph; a Typhoon has a 2000hp+ Napier Sabre engine and a top speed of over 400mph.

The Typhoon was actually intended to be the replacement for the Hurricane, but challenges in the high altitude interceptor role led to the Typhoon taking on a more fighter-bomber role as the war went on.

2 comments

A Tornado is of course even more powerful. It has a pair of Turbo-Union RB199 afterburning triple-spool turbofan engines with 9800 lbf thrust each (17300 lbf with afterburners on) and a top speed of Mach 2.2 with the wing swept back.

Edit: at full afterburner, it burns fuel at a heat output of 235 MW (expressed as horsepower: 315140)

The Eurofighter Typhoon houses two EJ200 engine with 60 kN (13,500 lbf) of dry thrust and >90 kN (20,230 lbf) with afterburners. I believe there are experimental versions of EJ200 with >100 kN thrust but since Typhoon is being retired across Europe and no oversea sales, we won't see Typhoon armed with them.
A land route exists, so not technically overseas, this Typhoon is sometimes observed outside its signature range, eg over Yemen.
I had understood that the Hurricane was a stop gap interceptor/air superiority fighter until more Spitfires were produced. I'm quite surprised that the Typhoon wasn't seen as redundant, unless it was intended early in the design phase for bomber interceptor, but the need for that waned.