Design the best FAA fighter to be in service by Jan 1940

If you want a more powerful 0.5 inch round you could always go for the Vickers .5 inch Class D or HV (for high velocity), which was also developed in the mid-1920s. this used a more powerful 12.7x120SR cartridge with an impressive muzzle velocity of 3,040 fps (927 m/s). There was either a 43gram flat tailed bullet or a 45 gram boattailed one. As far as I am aware no aircraft gun was made by Vickers for this round. For more on this cartridge I recommend Antony William's excellent wed site.
 
They HAD to make something work, because the AM had rather foolishly not backed another engine 'just in case'.
They had done things, iirc, like do flight trials with a non-certified engine.

R-R engineers 'fixed' the problem with the 'bigger, better, Kestrel' masquerading as a Merlin, but it wasnt a real fix, just a stopgap.
In service in Jan 1940 means in production early 1938, so finishing trials late 37, at the latest.

The production of merlins actually delayed the squadron deployment of the Hurricane, as the early models went to bombers. Can you really see the AM agreeing to let the NAVY have a few hundred? Really?

Oh well that's a simple fix.....George Elliott has an accident
 
Still did good work in Korea with Ground support.
And on the Ground, it's with us today

Yes, the Browning is a gem, no two ways about it.

The biggest obstacle to using the Vickers .50 might well have been its fabric belt feed. No one ever developed a metal-link belt for it, which given its extensive naval use has always come across as a bit odd?
Canvas reacts very poorly when wet! Edgeworthy senior would often tell the tale of one of the guns in a multiple mount jamming, and the mount swinging wildly out of control, sawing the bow off a corvette.
Its especially puzzling since the Breda and Ho-103 using the same cartridge could use metal belts, now admittedly they were both based on Brownings.

Surely the belts in the wings of a fighter wouldn't get wet very often.
 
A bit on the muzzle energy of the Vickers .50 cal.

http://www.cartridgecollector.net/50-vickers-armstrong
" It developed about three times the muzzle energy of the .303 inch, but only two-thirds that of the .50 Browning."

So 1 .50 cal round was worth 3 .303 rounds, but only 2/3 of a Browning .50 cal with its 99mm cartridge. The Vickers was a bit lighter than the Browning and making them won't cause a balance of payments issue and foster a strategic industry, so I'm calling it; the weapon for our clean-sheet FAA 1940 fighter should be a battery of 4-6 Vickers .50 cal HMGs.

I'll also call the engine; the 1100hp Bristol Taurus sleeve valve radial.
 

Jack1971

Banned
If by chance, the FAA goes for Merlin power for BOTH fighter and TSR, does this impact investment at Bristol in radials?

I’m thinking a folding Sea Hurricane and Barracuda duo instead of Fulmar and Albacore.
 
Side topic thought. If the fighter is half decent, what is stopping the RAF nicking them all for the BoB?

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Assign FAA fighter squadrons to coastal defence during the Battle of Britain.
 
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Assign FAA fighter squadrons to coastal defence during the Battle of Britain.

In OTL the RAF were allocated FAA pilots to be utilised in various RAF squadrons, I think it quite plausible that FAA fighter squadrons are used to protect Naval Bases - Scapa Flow at least.
 
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Actually they dont even need a modified Hurricane,simply stack standard types on deck - the RN were quite familiar with the idea of a deck park.[/QUOTE]
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Deck parking comes with its own series of headaches.

First, it clutters the deck, complicating flying stations. Any airplane - that misses the arrester wires - CRASHES into the barrier net.
Clearing the foredeck makes “bolters” non-issues.

Even if you park airplanes along the edges of the deck - and hang tail wheels overboard on tracks - it simplifies deck movements.

The biggest limitation was elevator sizes on escort carriers, which limited wingspan.
May I suggest retrofitting (fictitious) skeletonized elevators? Skeletonized elevators are little more than three troughs, barely long enough to hold wheels on (a short list of) airplanes. These skeletonized elevators hang outboard, and travel outside the hull. Wingspan is only limited by hangar door size.

A secondary factor was stowage space below decks. If you fold wings parallel with the fuselage (Firefly), you can maximize the number of airplanes stowed below.

Contrary to officers’ beliefs, “Erks” do not enjoy servicing airplanes on a pitching deck while exposed to North Atlantic gales. Salt corrodes airplanes quickly and windshields need to be cleaned every few hours.
 

Jack1971

Banned
Actually they dont even need a modified Hurricane,simply stack standard types on deck - the RN were quite familiar with the idea of a deck park.
The Specification both calls for folding wings and gives sufficient time and resources to make one. There is no need to settle on a fixed wing Hurricane. And... fixed wing Hurricane won’t fit on Ark Royal.
 
a Fulmar with a Fairey Prince, and later a Monarch

you dont have to speed up the development of the engine that much to get it in service by 1940
 
Er, the RN were perfectly familiar with the concept of a deck park, and having aircraft parked using riggers.
How do you think they carried all those non-folding wing spitfires in OTL??
 

Glyndwr01

Banned
A bit on the muzzle energy of the Vickers .50 cal.

http://www.cartridgecollector.net/50-vickers-armstrong
" It developed about three times the muzzle energy of the .303 inch, but only two-thirds that of the .50 Browning."

So 1 .50 cal round was worth 3 .303 rounds, but only 2/3 of a Browning .50 cal with its 99mm cartridge. The Vickers was a bit lighter than the Browning and making them won't cause a balance of payments issue and foster a strategic industry, so I'm calling it; the weapon for our clean-sheet FAA 1940 fighter should be a battery of 4-6 Vickers .50 cal HMGs.

I'll also call the engine; the 1100hp Bristol Taurus sleeve valve radial.

What about the https://www.forgottenweapons.com/light-machine-guns/beardmore-farquhar-machine-gun/ converted to belt. The 0.5" version was about half the weight of the Browning.
 
A bit on the muzzle energy of the Vickers .50 cal.

http://www.cartridgecollector.net/50-vickers-armstrong
" It developed about three times the muzzle energy of the .303 inch, but only two-thirds that of the .50 Browning."

So 1 .50 cal round was worth 3 .303 rounds, but only 2/3 of a Browning .50 cal with its 99mm cartridge. The Vickers was a bit lighter than the Browning and making them won't cause a balance of payments issue and foster a strategic industry, so I'm calling it; the weapon for our clean-sheet FAA 1940 fighter should be a battery of 4-6 Vickers .50 cal HMGs.

I'll also call the engine; the 1100hp Bristol Taurus sleeve valve radial.


The energy you quote is for the standard Vickers 0.5 MG which is the naval mount in the lower picture in the article you linked to. The gun in the upper picture on the army mount is the Vickers HV which has longer gun barrels because it fires the more powerfull 12.7x120SR cartridge. APMEP this semi rimmed cartridge fire it's round at an MV of 3,040 fps (927 m/s) which energy wise puts it on par with the Browning.
 
Thank you I was un-aware that the .50 had a metal linked belt. I had only heard, and seen, of the fabric belt being used for that calibre.
The .303 metal belt was developed for WW1 aerial combat, but the metal link belts never seemed to be a big thing in land and sea use.
(Canvas belts are a bit awkward and bulky for wing mounts)

So we have solved one problem, now we just need to convince Vickers to build an air-cooled .50, or scale up the .303 Browning ... which is what Breda did. The Ho-103 went the other way and stripped down the M1921 Browning.
 
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Jack1971

Banned
How do you think they carried all those non-folding wing spitfires in OTL??
In the hangar.

world-war-ii-england-hms-indomitable-aircraft-carrier-seafire-are-picture-id78961212


AIUI, outriggers weren’t for permanent storage, but just to clear the flight deck during ops.
 
Everyone talking about using the Browning M2 need to remember the M2 available pre-war was not the gun used in 1942. It was heavier by approx 20 pounds, fired at 600 rpm, had a muzzle velocity of 2,400fps, only fired solid shot and had big problems with jamming when fitted in wing mounts (which is probably why the majority of early US fighters had fuselage mounted M2s). By mid 1940 Colt had sorted most of the problems but a working factory built gun is not going to be ready till 1941 a little bit late for 1939 production.

A better idea might have been Fabrique Nationals modified version of the M2 in 13.2x95 which was ready for production in May 1939.
 
My favourite might have been Naval fighter has always been the Bristol type 146 though its still stuck with a Mercury or Perseus. How many engines between 700 and 1,000hp did Bristol need. Mercury, Pegasus, Perseus, Taurus and Aquila, Rolls had one the Kestrel and seemed to do okay.

wowp_plane_gb_bristol-146.jpg
 
For the cannon you could always go for Antony G Williams what if Orliken cannon proposal. Quoted Below.

"An Alternative History

To sum up, by the end of the war the Japanese had produced a gun which had a comparable rate of fire to the Mauser MG 151/20, but weighed less, had a smoother recoil push and fired more powerful ammunition. The main disadvantage was that it was inherently unsuited to being synchronised to fire through the propeller disk, so it could not be mounted in a single-engined fighter's engine cowling or wing roots. None of the improvements made to the FFL were technically difficult, and they could all have been introduced at any time in the gun's development history if the need had been identified.

By comparison with the early war version of the 'ideal' WW2 20mm gun discussed HERE, the fully-developed FFL would have been very similar; the cartridge was equally powerful, the rate of fire much the same, the weight probably slightly less (no more than 35 kg) and the recoil effects easier to manage. The disadvantages would have been the inability to synchronise the gun (not an issue in British or American practice) and the probable inability to raise its rate of fire later.

Of course, the effectiveness of the gun would have been further increased by the adoption of lighter, more streamlined Ausf.C type M-Geschoss as proposed for the 'ideal' gun. Assuming a 105g shell with 20g HE, fired at 850 m/s, this would have a cartridge power score of 26, giving our uprated FFL a gun power of 312 and a gun efficiency of 8.9; significantly better in all respects than any actual wartime 20mm gun.

The SEMAG/Oerlikon Type L was on commercial sale, to anyone who wanted it, from the early 1920s onwards. Any nation with a reasonably competent gun industry could at modest cost have acquired the gun and developed it in the way described. In particular, the British were testing the bigger Oerlikon S in the late 1920s/early 1930s (including, interestingly, a belt-fed version). Had a British company decided to acquire and develop the Type L then, they could have had a highly competitive 20mm cannon in service for the start of WW2. By comparison with the Hispano Mk II, it would have been less powerful but faster firing, much lighter and more compact, and caused fewer recoil-induced installation problems. It also would have been available in time for the Battle of Britain."


I always have always thought that for an ATl it would be difficult to better this proposal to give any protagonist a 'Best Off' aircraft cannon in 1940 which was not ASB.
 

Jack1971

Banned
My favourite might have been Naval fighter has always been the Bristol type 146 though its still stuck with a Mercury or Perseus. How many engines between 700 and 1,000hp did Bristol need. Mercury, Pegasus, Perseus, Taurus and Aquila, Rolls had one the Kestrel and seemed to do okay.

wowp_plane_gb_bristol-146.jpg
That’s one tiny plane, 3ft shorter than a Spitfire. How did they fit eight mgs, fuel and armour in there?

bristol146-1.jpg
 
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