Westland Whirlwind

[NARSES2]

Interesting re the 20mm sideways mounting Jon, and if I'd bothered to read my Putnam's properly it would have told me that  . In the same book there's also a picture of a Mk I with an experiments nose mounted pitot and from a distance that might look like a canon....with my eyesight anyway.

Has there ever been an uglier head on view of an aeroplane ? Even some of the French 1930's "Gothic" designs would be pushed to beat it.

[Mossie]

Looks like a machine gun armed spider.

It's up there, but I can think of a few.  The Martin B-10 comes to mind in the pre-approval war period.  There's a lot of modern special ops aircraft with all sorts of pimples and lumps that look awful head on.  The Canberra T.17 comes to mind too.

[PR19_Kit]

Plus the Viet Nam era B-57G.

[Mossie]

Fugly.

[Weaver]

I'm thinking that the bike is a BSA Empire Star:

[Old Wombat]

I'm going with a 1935-ish BSA Blue Star (although Empire Star is a fair bet, too):

[NARSES2]

It's up there, but I can think of a few.  The Martin B-10 comes to mind in the pre-approval war period. 

Don't you go insulting one of my favourite aircraft  I've always liked the B-10 and am eagerly waiting my Azure/Fromm one, but I know what you mean. 

[Mossie]

Eye of the beholder and all that, I'm sure it has a lovely personality!

[Weaver]

I'm going with a 1935-ish BSA Blue Star (although Empire Star is a fair bet, too):

Fair suggestion. I couldn't say which model of Empire/Blue Star it was. It looks like it has a single cast pushrod tube, but then other things don't line up so well. You can't really judge it by accessories either, since seats, pillion pads, luggage racks etc, were all routinely replaced/customised.

[zenrat]

Unless someone has access to TV procedural cop show quality (read "magic") photo enhancement software < puts hand on hip - takes off sunglasses - makes quip - puts sunglasses back on > then we'll never know.

That Blue Star is a gorgeous looking little bike.  Nice and compact, its proportions are just right.

[Mossie]

I know nowt about bikes, but I'm going to plump for Blue Star.  The signs for me are the angle of the frame between the tank and rear mudguard and the slight upward angle of the exhaust.  Other than that I find them very difficult to tell apart, even with the big images.

[Stan in YUL]

Why weaken the armament with .303s when you have a perfectly good 4 x 20mm arrangement in the nose?

The 37mm, I think, was trialed for either train-busting or anti-shipping op's.

One of the drawbacks to the 4 x 20mm was the short capacity ammo drums ( 60 rounds I think).  Replacing 2 of the 20s with 303s gives you plenty of room for a larger capacity belt feed system for the remaining 20s and a decent capacity for the 303s.  Faster firing, certainly still a match for any likely opponent, and not really lighter armed then the early sea hurricanes.  It's also known that some of those 4 x 20mm sea hurricanes removed two weapons from time to time to suit operational needs.  The real issue for a Sea Whirlwind would always have been the landing speed (90 knt approx )

[jcf]

The limited capacity of the drums was one of the main drivers of the revised nose configuration.
Adding ammo tanks and a feed system wasn't possible with the 'quad' arrangement, thus the
flattened four abreast layout.

[Weaver]

Good video on the Whirlwind which links to a site with new research about the aircraft. It seems that the problems with it may not have been as much to do with the Peregrine engine as with the choice of propellors and radiators:

This is the website mentioned: https://www.dingeraviation.net/westland/whirlwind.html

[jcf]

Petter spitting the dummy when his decisions were questioned wasn't helpful.