I believe so. The Hurrie was far easier to build and to fly moderately well; experienced pilots report the Hurrie as a more stable gun platform and so without the ultimate manoeuvrability of the Spitfire, you can't have it all ways.
I think that's right and the general tactic of engaging Spitfires with the fighters and the Hurries with the bombers was well-founded.
That's about it, much like D-Day too with the Americans vis-à-vis the British and Commonwealth forces.

The Hurricane of course became something of a multi-role fighter, which the Spitfire could never do, having bomb racks and huge cannon fitted.

We should remember though that the Merlin itself had a difficult birth and was nearly scrapped, RR aren't as necessarily cute as the vaunted folk-lore image would have you believe. Prototype engines were dreadful and readily self-destroyed with all manner of fundamental problems, cracked heads and rod throwing mainly. It is true to say RR developed themselves out of trouble, but it was a close thing.

RR was also a cottage industry compared to the major motor manufacturers at the time and it became quickly obvious that they had no hope of making Merlins at the required rate. Bear in mind Henry Royce was somewhat idiosyncratic and lived in Brighton with a small team of draughtsmen who drew up his ideas for the factory to make almost as a hobby projects. Royce also did the quality control, his habit was to wander the factory with a small hammer and fetch a good whack to anything he didn't like so it had to be scrapped.

The govt demanded RR pass the drawings to Ford and others for serious quantity production and much to RR's chagrin they were returned in days with a curt note pronouncing them as unworkable. Big industry of course makes things with semi-auto tools to tight tolerances and minimum scrap whereas RR hand selected everything for median tolerance.

Of luck too just at the outset of the BoB was the chance finding that the Hamilton Standard two pitch propeller was a fit for the Merlin reduction shaft, we would have been hugely out-classed with the original fixed wooden jobbie. However, many pilots had ground crashes by forgetting to engage fine pitch before take off and were left with an under-revving and under boosted Merlin that couldn't pull the aircraft off, even Bader managed this

Also remember the chemists finally figured out why our 100 oct fuel worked so much better than the US stuff coming over that barely performed as well as the standard UK 80 oct AVGAS. With the spec re-written the first tanker load of the good stuff arrived in the USS tanker Bunker Hill just in time and this is still a reference fuel now and known as "Bunker Hill 100."

I think we can see the tweaks happening to the Spitfire and the Merlin through the rapid succession of mark numbers and this shows that neither were perfect or anywhere near it. The Merlin, and RR, benefited hugely with the engagement of (Sir) Stanley Hooker fresh from Oxford University where he proved to be a whiz at fluid dynamics and within weeks at RR saw the supercharger as frankly crap.

His re-design released another significant shot of Merlin power (I'd call 30% significant). Indeed he who flows the most air through any IC engine gets the most grunt and RR's lead through Hooker kept the Merlin and Griffon in the race and subsequently gave RR the lead on jet engines where mass flows are absolutely fundamental to performance.

Stan Hooker was the person who saw the Mustang's Allison as a similar package size to the Merlin and asked to borrow one of these training aircraft, as they were then, for a trial installation of the Merlin; the rest is truly history.

Hooker's autobiography is a fascinating read, "Not much of an Engineer" is highly commended. ISBN: 1853102857

We can't leave without mentioning Miss Shilling's orifice and its contribution or her biography "Negative Gravity" ISBN 0954616502

Also too is the sorry episode of some, fortunately un-named, prat in the Air Ministry who received a lumpy parcel from the European underground containing a DB 601 fuel injection pump; which he promptly put on a shelf and forgot about until war's end.

Oh dear.

If you can find it, and Hampshire has one copy held by RAE Farnborough with a lengthy library service waiting list, then this is for the aviation petrol heads among us:
LJK Setright: The power to fly: the development of the piston engine in aviation. Allen & Unwin, 1971.

R.