A pair of Harpies

[Glenn Gilbertson]

Anxious to move quickly into a new era, Hawkers pushed the development of the Fury monoplane. The RAF were keen to adopt the Rolls Royce Goshawk evaporatively cooled engine, and arguments raged over the value of fuselage mounted guns as opposed to fitting them in the wings. Two evaluation batches were ordered; the Goshawk meant that the whole of the front of the wings had to be devoted to cooling, so four machine guns were fuselage mounted in the  Harpy I as the monoplane was renamed. The second batch , the Harpy II, retained the Kestrel engine and the two fuselage mounted machine guns of the Fury but added two machine guns in each wing. The wings had a lighter wing structure than the Harpy I, being largely fabric covered. Two new squadrons were formed, 73 sqn with the Harpy II achieving service before 213 sqn with the troublesome Goshawk engines. After short front-line service the Harpy IIs became useful trials aircraft, while Harpy Is were re-engined with Kestrels as popular senior officers' runabouts.
Take 1/72 scale Matchbox Fury, Airfix Hurricane II, Airfix Gladiator and surplus A-model Fury spats:



Result:
Hawker Harpy I, squadron commander 213 sqn:


Hawker Harpy I with Harpy II of A flight commander 73 sqn:

[dogsbody]

Nice one.

[Brian da Basher]

Woah Glenn, gorgeous!!!! I really enjoyed your very believable backstory and I respect the incredible creativity and imagination it took to pull this off!

Not just one but two!! Excellent!

Those squadron colors are a really nice touch.

Great stuff!

Brian da Basher

[The Rat]

Totally, 100% believable! 

[lancer]

Outstanding!!

[John Howling Mouse]

Nice!  I was going to do a Fury monoplane at some point (the biplane seems so advanced, so close to being a monoplane, eh?) but never imagined it with SPATS!

Great idea.