Hawker after the Hurricane?

[Peg Leg Pom]

I wonder if a radial Hurricane could be turned into the WWII of the heavily (relatively)armed and armoured Trench Fighters like the Sopwith Salamander (an armoured Snipe).

So the pilot has an armoured cockpit, a Universal Wing able to carry 12 x .303's, or 4 x 20MM both with hard points for bombs, or 2 x 40mm S guns and 2 x .303.

Performance would drop and they'd need top cover, but that could be considered a fair trade off for increased survivability close to the ground.

 

[marathag]

I wonder if a radial Hurricane could be turned into the WWII of the heavily (relatively)armed and armoured Trench Fighters like the Sopwith Salamander (an armoured Snipe).

So the pilot has an armoured cockpit, a Universal Wing able to carry 12 x .303's, or 4 x 20MM both with hard points for bombs, or 2 x 40mm S guns and 2 x .303.

Performance would drop and they'd need top cover, but that could be considered a fair trade off for increased survivability close to the ground.

You roughly have 3000 pounds of payload to work with. Enough Armor to be worth it would take up nearly a third of that. You have 97 gallons of fuel. Thats almost 800 pounds when fueled up. Pilot, Radio, Oxygen, call that 325

So you have around 900 pounds for guns, ammo for them and bombs, with full fuel load that would give you around 520 mile range.
(12) .303 with ammo would be around 700 pounds, so you got enough some some 100 pound fragmentation bombs

if you can live with 300 mile range, that gets you, say, 350 pounds back, for 1250 pounds of weaponry .
You now can have a single 500 or two 250 pounders.

Cutting back some armor, say to USN Skyraider levels, you get 500 pounds more for 1750 pounds of weaponry, for two 500 pounders.

The Hurribomber really needs more power, like Griffon or Centaurus levels of power to get the payload up for both armor and weapons

 

[Peg Leg Pom]

The most common of the wartime Hercules engines gave around 1600hp which while not up to the level of even the early Griffons is still a large improvement on the roughly 1300hp the Hurricane IIC had to work with. With that extra power in an engine less vulnerable to damage you'd have a nasty ground attack aircraft even without extra protection. Useful in Burma where a bullet in the engine or cooling system probably means a dead pilot somewhere in the jungle.

 

[Driftless]

It took me a while to find this article. The discussions of the thick vs thin wings brought it to mind.

From the Smithsonian Air & Space Magazine: The Perfect Airplane Wing (basically a synopsis of various wing shapes and their virtues)

 

[Peg Leg Pom]

Moving on from the Hurricane, I've always thought it a shame that Hawker never built a carrier capable Hunter.