Fairey Gannet

[Mossie]

A thread for the lady with the 'lovely personality'.  Not going to win any beauty contests but she has a heart of gold & can charm the most miserable of souls.  The Gannet is quite whiffable, only seeing service with the Royal Navy, Marineflieger, Royal Australian Navy & Indonesian Navy with a single civil operator Hamilton Standard for prop development in the US.  S-2 Tracker operators are the most obvious alternatives, Alize (France & India), operators of P-2 & P-3's maybe using a smaller & cheaper platform.

Plenty of scope for kits, there's quite a few mainstream injection kits in 1/72 modern offerings from Revell & Trumpeter, with an old but servicable offering from Frog.  You can build most of the major variant's from the kits available with a few simple conversion kits for the lesser marks.  The only one not available is the AEW.3 which is has a few marked differences, but you can get this from AlleyCat in resin.  1/48 is a little more spasre, the AS.1/4 in short run from Classic Airframes & a Vacform from Dynavector, you'll need to convert the trainer, AEW, COD & ECM marks yourself.

Thoughts from me:

South African Air Force
Royal Canadian Navy
JMSDF
Waterbomber
Green Cheese armed variant with bulged bomb bay (Freightdogs up & coming release may be good for this, but would need modifying).

Simon

[Mossie]

Thoughts from others:

Gannet projects from Secret Projects,
http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,9795.0/highlight,fairey+gannet.html

Aeroplane Monthly article, mentions the two below & a Rolls-Royce RB.109 (Tyne) powered variant.


AEW variant with E-2 style radome:


Glider tug:


RCN profile from Damien Burke (Damien B here) on his Thunder & Lightnings site:
http://www.thunder-and-lightnings.co.uk/gannet/pictures.php

[PR19_Kit]

I reckon Fairey didn't really do their stuff with the COD variant. There's almost no airframe changes at all, they just deleted the radome! How non-serious is that?

No, what they REALLY should have done was to follow the same process as Grumman did with the Greyhound. Sweep up the tail, fit a twin fin-rudder assembly to the tailplane and cut a big opening door in the underside of the tail. Use the AEW 3 cockpit and exhausts forward of the wing and you have a MUCH more practical device.

[deathjester]

PR Gannet?  C'mon, you know you want to

[rickshaw]

I reckon Fairey didn't really do their stuff with the COD variant. There's almost no airframe changes at all, they just deleted the radome! How non-serious is that?

No, what they REALLY should have done was to follow the same process as Grumman did with the Greyhound. Sweep up the tail, fit a twin fin-rudder assembly to the tailplane and cut a big opening door in the underside of the tail. Use the AEW 3 cockpit and exhausts forward of the wing and you have a MUCH more practical device.

Still be awfully narrow at the rear.  The difference between the C-2 and the Gannet is of course they designed a completely new, wide fuselage for freight duties for the C-2 as against the small, narrow one they had on the original E-2.  While the drawing looks OK in profile, I'd like to see what they did with it in plan.  Do they give it a big, wide new fuselage or stick with the same old, narrow one?   If they do, then rather negates the point of a loading ramp in the rear fuselage, now doesn't it?

[pyro-manic]

How about a piston-powered version? A socking great radial engine up front would change the Gannet's look quite drastically. Maybe make it a taildragger as well?
Twin-prop version, with the Double Mamba buried in the fuselage and shaft-driven props on the wings? That frees up space in the nose for a bombardier/observer/radar/guns.
Jet-powered version - two Avons/Sapphires in the wing-roots, or in Meteor/Canberra-style nacelles.
High-wing version, borrowing some of the look of the Barracuda?

[Mossie]

The Spearfish lead to the Gannet & had a Centaurus up front.  You can see a measure of resemblance, in fact you can kind of trace the roots to the Gannet from the Swordfish, through the Albacore, Barracuda & Spearfish.  Each design was a step up from the other, faster, heavier more powerful.  As part of Faireys O.5/43 (the spec that produced the Spearfish) submission, there was a two engined design, as well as a Griffon engined Barracuda development.



Although there were expectations that the Spearfish would have a glittering carrer, it was almost obselete when it flew.  This lead to a the O.21/44 specification that produced the precursor to the Gannet.  The Fairey O.21/44 would have had two Merlins in the nose.  I suppose you could see the Gannet as having two engines, the Double Mamba of course being two Mamba's coupled together.



There was a follow on project, the Fairey Strike Fighter:

[PR19_Kit]

Still be awfully narrow at the rear.  The difference between the C-2 and the Gannet is of course they designed a completely new, wide fuselage for freight duties for the C-2 as against the small, narrow one they had on the original E-2.  While the drawing looks OK in profile, I'd like to see what they did with it in plan.  Do they give it a big, wide new fuselage or stick with the same old, narrow one?   If they do, then rather negates the point of a loading ramp in the rear fuselage, now doesn't it?

Oh come on! 

It took me at least 5 mins to knock that profile together, while I was in the middle of replying! Of course the fuselage is wider, a bit like a Herk comes to a duck tail under the fin. But remember the real COD Gannets only had their bomb bay to carry stuff in, so ANY increase in volume would be good.

[PR19_Kit]

PR Gannet?  C'mon, you know you want to

Hehehe, can you IMAGINE the wing fold that a long span Gannet would have? 

[Weaver]

PR Gannet?  C'mon, you know you want to

Hehehe, can you IMAGINE the wing fold that a long span Gannet would have? 

They'd have to put a sign on it saying "THIS AIRCRAFT HAS NOT CRASHED".....

[Weaver]

Jet-powered Gannet, done in about 5 mins:



Spinner becomes radome, air intake now feeds a turbojet in the former bomb bay, tail is undercut for the jetpipe - simple! (and if you believe that.....)

[Weaver]

On my list of to-do projects is an RAF-in-Vietnam Gannet doing the same role as the Skyraider. The plan is to take a FROG Gannet, junk the canopy, cut the entire rear cockpit and wedge-shaped centre spine off, and replace it with the canopy and deck from the Matchbox Meteor NF.14 to give a 2-seater with ejection seats and decent vision. Obviously the radome is going.

The original plan was to have fuel in the bomb bay and 2 x 20mm in each mid-wing section, but then I found out that the Gannet has a leading edge fuel tank there. It was all getting a bit to complex for a conversion of an old aircraft by now, so I decided the bomb bay and wing tanks would stay, the Hispanos would go,  and it would get extra pylons so it could use gun pods if neccessary.

It's going to be escorting a Westland Belvedere Mk.2 (modified Yak-14) on a CSAR mission.....

[GTX]

How about a mini gunship variant with some 20mm and mini-guns pointing sideways?

Regards,

Greg

[pyro-manic]

Someone did a Gannet gunship/attacker recently. Can't remember who offhand, but it was pretty good.

I love the O.21/44 design! Might have to attempt that at some point. I have a Spearfish in the stash - I was thinking of doing it for the 46 GB, but I've got too many projects on the go already between that, Africa and my other in-progress builds.

[Mossie]

Jet-powered Gannet, done in about 5 mins:

Spinner becomes radome, air intake now feeds a turbojet in the former bomb bay, tail is undercut for the jetpipe - simple! (and if you believe that.....)

You could do it even simpler, pitot intake in the style of the Lightning, extend the existing exhausts to a bifurcated arrangement like the Sea Hawk.  Bobs your uncle, fanny's your aunt!