A Hurricane could take down a Heinkel 111, Dornier 17 and even a Me 110. If no Me 109 in the hands of an equally skilled pilot was around and had a tank full of gas. Luftwaffe pilots didn't fear the Hurricane, once they that all it could do was outturn an Me 109, they adapted their tactics.The Spitfire, otoh, was widely respected among Luftwaffe pilots and other than the Mustang they did not care much for Allied fighter planes. That said, the Hurricane had some advantages over the early Spitfire - it could take more of a beating and aces lice Douglas Bader preferred its more closely aligned eight Brownings for their more concentrated firepower. Luftwaffe pilots were also hopeless in North Africa in telling the Hurricane apart from the even more lumbering P 40 Kitty- and Warhawks, so Hurricanes sometimes had an element of surprise.
No issue, numerically the Hurricane bore the brunt of the Battle of Britain, but not by shooting down Me 109s - that wasleft to the Spitfires -, but by downing German bombers which was strategically much more important. Bombers took more resources and time to build and a reduced bomber fleet endangered another Blitzkrieg success against Russia. Who knows, if the hundreds of bombers downed in England had been available for the attack on Russia and if Hitler hadn't wasted crucial time with the war in Greece (thus attacking Russia a few weeks later than planned and being faced with Russian winter earlier as a consequence), then WW II might have turned out differently, glad that it didn't though!
But without the Spitfires, the Hurricanes couldn't have wreaked as much havoc on the Dorniers and Heinkels as they did.
