Royal Navy Grumman-HSA Tiger FGA.2

[Weaver]

Okay, for this GB I shall be adding to my FAA-goes-American timeline  with a Hasegawa 1/72nd Grumman F11-F1 Tiger painted up as a Grumman-Hawker-Siddeley Tiger FGA.1 of the Fleet Air Arm.

Physical changes will be minor:

2 x 30mm ADENs instead of the 4 x 20mm Colts
Possible modified wing fold
Possible bigger drop tanks (Lightning/Starfighter)
Rescribed nose to make a bigger radome

[Captain Canada]

Sounds good. Don't see many Tigers on here !

[NARSES2]

Didn't realsie the kit was that old. Built one as an Aeronvale aircraft a few years ago and it was an enjoyable build 

Looking forward to this

[Weaver]

Didn't realsie the kit was that old. Built one as an Aeronvale aircraft a few years ago and it was an enjoyable build 

Looking forward to this

Yep, 1981 according to Scalemates: https://www.scalemates.com/kits/331197-hasegawa-d017-grumman-f11f-1-tiger Must admit, I thought it was older actually. It's that 1983 boxing too: grey plastic not bloody blue!

[Mossie]

Yeah, nice selection, a Tiger was my first completed whiff.  I personally think it's one of the best looking fighters to have flown.  I've got one in the stash, i might get around to a Super Tiger conversion some day (lightbulb moment, off to Colin's suggestions page again).

I wonder if there'd been British Tiger, they'd have been better performers due to knowledge of the sapphire and it's afterburner?

[Weaver]

Yeah, nice selection, a Tiger was my first completed whiff.  I personally think it's one of the best looking fighters to have flown.  I've got one in the stash, i might get around to a Super Tiger conversion some day (lightbulb moment, off to Colin's suggestions page again).

I wonder if there'd been British Tiger, they'd have been better performers due to knowledge of the sapphire and it's afterburner?

Well my background story has the Brit ones Avon-engined so there's plently of scope there for more power. According to it's Wiki page. an Avon-engined Super-Tiger was offered to Germany, but there's no mention of it in the Ginter book, which otherwise talks a lot about export efforts. It's written by Grumman test pilot 'Corky' Meyer and you get the impression from his 'excessive politeness' about Lockheed that this and several other failed attempts are still a sore point...

[zenrat]

Good box art.

[NARSES2]

I personally think it's one of the best looking fighters to have flown.  I

Definitely one of the nicest looking jet fighters for sure

[Weaver]

It's a damned shame it got hobbled by the engine problems. The J-79-engined Super-Tiger was excellent. According to Meyer, it initially won the evaluations for Germany, Canada, Switzerland and Japan.

It lost out to the Starfighter in Germany and Japan due to politics and Lockheed's chicanery.

It lost to the Mirage in Switzerland due to different politics and chicanery (fun fact: the Swiss defence minister's brother was a manager at Dassault...)

It lost to the Starfighter in Canada because Lockheed offered local production deals and offsets that would employ more redundant Canadian aerospace workers sooner that Grumman's longer-term proposals.

[Mossie]

I do find it funny in an ironic way that he offered it to the UK on the very day the 1957 white paper was announced!

[Weaver]

Obligatory parts layout shot:

[PR19_Kit]

What a great looking aircraft the Tiger is. 

I've never bought or built one, shame on me.

[Weaver]

Not had a chance to do any work on this today, but I have found a few thought-provoking things.

Firstly, the height to the top of the fin was only 13' 2.75" and since the only wing fold was downward folding tips, that means it would have fitted into the problematic 14' hangars on a number of British carriers. My backstory's already written and doesn't take advantage of that, but it's there for somebody else. Regrettably, it doesn't work for the Skyhawk, which was 15' tall (although you might be able to do things about that).

Secondly, I've been thinking about the wing fold. The standard Tiger had downward folding wingtips that reduced it's span from 31' 7.5" to 27'4". By comparison, the famously non-folding Skyhawk spanned 26'6". This is a nice, simple solution since the folding tips don't include any fuel or control surfaces. On a big USN carrier being 10 inches wider than a Skyhawk is hardly a problem, but on small RN carriers, the Skyhawk would already be non-ideal and the Tiger would compound the problem.

Since the Tiger's undercarriage is fuselage-mounted, it's very tempting to move the fold point further inboard, however this creates some significant redesign issues. The Tiger's thin wing is notably simple, with a full span integral fuel tank, and full span, one piece slats, flaps and spoilers, all activated by jacks near the wingroot operating through mechanical linkages. An inboard fold is therefore going to involve:

1. Splitting the control surfaces, with all the extra aerodynamic testing & development that implies,

2. Carrying a fuel pipe across the fold or losing the outboard tankage (60 to 100 gals),

3. Carrying the mechanical linkages across the fold or fitting secondary jacks outboard and carrying hydraulics across the fold.

I'm not sure whether getting the span down to around 18' is worth all that redesign, but then again, it means you get, roughly speaking, four aircraft in the space formerly occupied by three.

What do you think?

[Thorvic]

Don't worry about the height most British Carrier hangers were 17'6 to accommodate the likes of the Walrus and later Sea Otter amphibians used in the COD role. Only the Indomitable and the Implacable/Indefatigable  of the later Illustrious class had the low hangers as they had double stacked hangers which is why despite being the newer carriers, they served in the non flying training roles.

The width issue is mostly due to the Aircraft lifts, the ones on Illustrious being designed around types that swept back their wings. They enlarged it on Illustrious post war for her trials carrier role to allow the newer types to be tested.

The Light Fleet Carriers of the Colossus, Majestic and Centaur classes should all be OK for Tiger use, and the Fleet Carriers of the Audacious class and the modernised Victorious would be OK too. New designs like the Malta and CV52 were also OK as they were designed in mind with the larger heavier US types.

[Weaver]

Don't worry about the height most British Carrier hangers were 17'6 to accommodate the likes of the Walrus and later Sea Otter amphibians used in the COD role. Only the Indomitable and the Implacable/Indefatigable  of the later Illustrious class had the low hangers as they had double stacked hangers which is why despite being the newer carriers, they served in the non flying training roles.

I've only got them operating from Centaurs in my backstory. I just mentioned the height in case anybody else wanted to use them in a different backstory. You could get quite a lot of them onto an Inflexible!

The width issue is mostly due to the Aircraft lifts, the ones on Illustrious being designed around types that swept back their wings. They enlarged it on Illustrious post war for her trials carrier role to allow the newer types to be tested.

The lifts on the Centaurs will fit them fine. I was more concerned about the total number of aircraft that could be carried, since those carriers were pretty small. If you line Tigers up side-by-side, then reducing the folded width from 27'4" to 18" gets you 33% more aircraft. On the other hand, that's a very simplistic view of deck/hanger spotting.