Westland Whirlwind

[zenrat]

A Griffonised Whirlwind could be even better, albeit a tad nose heavy..................... 

Forward swept wings would help in that department.

Or a four gun turret.

[NARSES2]

Yup I've built a Merlin engine'd one which is on here somewhere.

Martin H has built a whole family of them 

[Doug K]

I merlinised one which is posted elsewhere, I'm tempted to do some more too

Thought of by everyone, built by very few. So dig those pictures out!

Build thread here https://www.whatifmodellers.com/index.php?topic=45943.msg827669#msg827669

[kitnut617]

I think I've posted this before (only I can't find it), but Westland really had Merlin engined concept planned. One of the articles in an old Air-Britain AeroMilitaria issue, was about Welkins, the article says before the aircraft got called a Welkin, it was referred to as the Merlin Engine Whirlwind ---- but I think this would make a more adequate Griffon engine Whirlwind.

[Stan in YUL]

Regrettably late to the discussion but where there any serious attempts to address the high landing speed issue without a radical wing redesign.  If it were possible, and the armament configured to 2 x 20mm + 4 x .303 This could have been an interesting alternative to the early Sea Hurricanes and Seafires.  Certainly from a landing gear point of view, a navalized Whirlwind would have been way better than any Seafire .

[NARSES2]

  If it were possible, and the armament configured to 2 x 20mm + 4 x .303 This could have been an interesting alternative to the early Sea Hurricanes and Seafires.  Certainly from a landing gear point of view, a navalized Whirlwind would have been way better than any Seafire .

Interesting. A whirlwind was tested with a single 37mm canon, so they were thinking of alternatives to the 20mm's.

Out of interest where would you put the 0.303" ? In the nose or wing mounted ?

[Old Wombat]

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.

[NARSES2]

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

Assuming they could be fired separately the navy might have looked at the .303"s as being useful when strafing the decks of ships ? Their Lordship's at the Admiralty did have their own way of thinking 

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

Interesting. I've not read what it was trialled for, just knew it had been. Automatically assumed it was for tank busting, but train busting in particular sounds a good idea. Wonder if it would have had a .303" for sighting purposes in the same way the Hurricanes with a pair of 40.mm's did ?

[jcf]

Neither the proposed 37mm or 40mm gun were ever fitted, the photo that has been often identified
as a 'big gun' nose configuration looks like a test for the lengthened, revised nose of the Mk.II using
belt-fed rather than drum fed 20mm Hispanos. The guns were mounted abreast rather than in the
quad layout of the Mk.I.

Note the identical bulges on the 4-gun mockup photo, and the single-gun photo. The bulges fwd. of the
windscreen were to cover the edges of the 20mm ammo tanks that were forward of the new fuel tank
that was to be added as part of the Mk.II mods.

The most likely explanation for the misidentification is that people have conflated a written proposal for
a heavy gun installation with the photo of the revised nose tests. There was no reason for a heavy gun nose
to look like the new 20mm nose.

[Leading Observer]

Very interesting photos. For the Bikers amongst us, can any one identify the bike in the background?

[comrade harps]

A Griffonised Whirlwind could be even better, albeit a tad nose heavy..................... 

I'm sure that can be corrected with a fuselage stretch

[perttime]

A Griffonised Whirlwind could be even better, albeit a tad nose heavy..................... 

I'm sure that can be corrected with a fuselage stretch

Or by using aluminium, instead of magnesium, in the tail.

Some late Spitfires just had weight added in the tail, to balance them.

[jcf]

Very interesting photos. For the Bikers amongst us, can any one identify the bike in the background?

Looks like it might be an Ariel.

[jcf]

A Griffonised Whirlwind could be even better, albeit a tad nose heavy..................... 

Not too bad if it was only a single Griffon in the nose. 

A single Griffon is actually more powerful than two Peregrines.

[zenrat]

Very interesting photos. For the Bikers amongst us, can any one identify the bike in the background?

Looks like it might be an Ariel.

I think it might be an AJS.  It appears to have the magneto mounted in front of the cylinder barrel (at least that is how i interpret the shiny thing visible in the loop of the exhaust downpipe).

Mind you, pre war single cylinder motorbikes all looked very similar.