With 100 Octane fuel it might nudge 300 mph which for the Far East before mid 1941 is adequate.
Last edited:
Alternate Aircraft of Nations
- Thread starter Count of Crisco
- Start date
I can see the mono-Gladiator being used as an attack plane and continuing as a second-line fighter. It gives me Boomerang/Wirraway vibes. How much of a bomb load do you think it could carry? Is the gun armament 4 .303 mg?
If the Indian factory was sent the plans for the naval variant of the Gladiator, this monoplane variant might get tried out as a carrier plane.
Edit: That is a nice-looking bird.
The biplane evolves into a monoplane, though this looks like more of an evolution than the Grumman F3F to F4F process. This has me thinking of Arado doing this with the Ar197. It would also lead to Germany having more than one frontline single-seat fighter.
Its a beautifull design and extremly cool, but it doesnt realy look like a believable alt-history aircraft and has much more of a weird science or retro sci-fi aesthetic to it. The changing-sweep wings and the general fuselage shape with the very elongated nose and bulges for what I assume to be a tricylce undercarriage are just too modern for the era. Much of the design looks about two generations ahead of the time while still retaining the quite archaic defensive armament and small diameter, early-style jet engines.
(Picture from Ariel Alvarez at CDNB Artstation)
Called 'Lancashire' as a way to reflect the entry into the Jet Age, this 1945 upgrade to the Lancaster used 4 Rolls Royce Nene jet engines to enact high-speed night runs to Berlin and back as the Red Army began its trek back into Ukraine and towards occupied Leningrad/St Petersburg. With a range of 2500nmi and bomb load of 10000kg, this heavy hitter was known to carry the Grand Slam deep into the heart of the Reich and latter the Empire of Japan. It was also key to the incapacitation of Ohrdruf, Der Reise complex, and ultimately the Skoda facility at Pibruns where the Germans concentrated so much of their research efforts before the final surrender. Many were converted into fast airliners after the war though limited range meant the Hadley Long Stirling and others like it would be more memorable for some of the first commercial transatlantic jet travel.
I thought the art was good enough to merit an entry, snd yeah it had flaws but the aesthetic was interesting.
(Picture from Ariel Alvarez at CDNB Artstation)
Arguably one of the best prop fighters of the war on either side, the Fiat G.61 'Ghepardo', or 'Cheetah', combined a radical departure in tail design with a Junkers 213-J engine producing almost 2300hp before methanol injection. This gave the aircraft a top speed and ceiling competitive or superior to most Allied aircraft at the time, but thankfully limited Italian industrial capacity and reliance on German engines made these relatively rare aircraft with less than 400 produced by war's end. Two Mk108 30mm cannons and a pair of 20mm Mk105 cannons made for frequently lethal encounters with Allied aircraft, especially in a veteran pilot's hands. After the war it became a favorite of stunt flyers and aerial racers.
So you are thinking this could be an earlier Fw 190 type plane
The above pictures of the Gloster F5/34 give an inkling of how the Gladiator mono plane might look.
This model mashup of a monoplane Gloster Gladiator comes from AltcarBoB on the Britmodeller Forum.
In November 1940 the Delhi Aircraft Factory begins production of the Westland P12 for use as a light bomber and as a light transport for the Royal Indian Air Force. The bomber role doesn't last long once faced with Japanese fighters. The light transport variant however proves to be a success, with the rear loading door (in place of the turret) being very popular. Long after the end of WWII one transport P12, supplied to China in 1943 was captured supplying Viet Cong in South Vietnam
Last edited:
By all reports the F5/34 was a good aircraft for 1936.37 but the Mercury engine meant that ir was underpowered compared to the New Hurricane and Spitfire. The AM considered that it lacked development potential compared to those two aircraft and simply got Gloster Aircraft to build Hawker Hurricanes instead. Gloster Aircraft was owned by Hawkers so there was no incentive to develop the F5/34 as a competitor to their own Hurricane aircraft. This is the primary reason why Follond left Gloster Aircraft in 1937 to set up his own company, instead if playing second fiddle to Camm at Hawkers.
This has the same type of awesome retro-sci-fi aesthetics as the Betty and now I want some kind of pulp sci-fi setting where both of these are a thing
Aesthetics wise this is closer to actual late 40 aircraft than the other two and more plausible overall. The bulbous bow installation of the liquid cooled engine is rather strange but aside from that its a quite cool design!
Was not the follow on engine from the Mercury the Pegasus? I have a soft spot for the Stringbag. If you mounted a Pegasus instead of the Mercury would not the RN be interested? My thought was common engine.
I believe the intended engine for the production F5/34 was to have been the Perseus so they'd have a common engine with the Skua and (Gawd 'elp 'em) the Roc.
I was looking up the Pegasus and noticed that follow on engine, the Draco was a 27l fuel injected radial. They did not pursue it because there was little gain in performance. From what I gather, little effort was put into development of the engine. With 100 octane fuel, a good 2-stage super charger and continued development a 1,000 plus hp is not impossible.
If Bristol get the Taurus working properly in 1938/9 then that really is the engine to go for. So many aircraft could have benefitted from its power and relatively small frontal area.
Marcel Bloch dies in the Buchenwald concentration camp. Perish the French aircraft industry after WW2? Probably not but what happens to it? You still have Breguet, you still got the French public companies, you still have Morane Saulnier and Potez trying to get back into business. Henry Potez given his close ties with Bloch seems a logical candidate to take over the Bloch facilities which gives him industrial facilities, unlike OTL.
And then what? The French public companies licence build Vampire and Sea Venom, while their plans for domestic designs like VG.70/80/90 fail miserably. Does an Ouragan clone come out of the now Potez factory? Perhaps or perhaps Morane's paper projects sees the light of day or just as likely the French end up with a delayed Mystere equivalent by 1954. Things are perhaps more straightforward later on. By1955 Breguet dies, if Potez has gone into business it would be reasonable to see his company merging with Breguet to form an alternative to Sud Aviation. The Breguet 1120 looks, at least on paper a reasonable alternative to both Mirage III and Mirage F1, Breguet 1180 or 120 likely take the niche of Mirage IV.
Which has brought us potentially to the mid-late 1960s. Where one notes Breguet in OTL did work together with BAC/Bristol and was less adverse to it than Dassault. If this carries on the the TTL Potez-Breguet...
Thoughts?
And then what? The French public companies licence build Vampire and Sea Venom, while their plans for domestic designs like VG.70/80/90 fail miserably. Does an Ouragan clone come out of the now Potez factory? Perhaps or perhaps Morane's paper projects sees the light of day or just as likely the French end up with a delayed Mystere equivalent by 1954. Things are perhaps more straightforward later on. By1955 Breguet dies, if Potez has gone into business it would be reasonable to see his company merging with Breguet to form an alternative to Sud Aviation. The Breguet 1120 looks, at least on paper a reasonable alternative to both Mirage III and Mirage F1, Breguet 1180 or 120 likely take the niche of Mirage IV.
Which has brought us potentially to the mid-late 1960s. Where one notes Breguet in OTL did work together with BAC/Bristol and was less adverse to it than Dassault. If this carries on the the TTL Potez-Breguet...
Thoughts?
And the other pet peeve of mine... how do you get the Italian aircraft industry going, or rather get it designing and building its own fighter designs after 1945? FIAT G80 looks like a reasonable starting point it seems to me but it's not as if we are choke full of information despite notes that "Italian designers expected to resume work in short order" Well why the did not and we don't have even paper projects thill the second half of the 1950s and these not by FIAT or Macchi...
That would make an interesting story line. The Gloster F5/34 with a working and developed Taurus engine in 1938. Navalized version to follow with folding wings. Part of it would be Folland stays when Hawker takes over the company and backs a navalized fighter. Perhaps have one of the directors sons in the FAA?