The Me 323 was a powered version of the Me 321 glider. As I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread General Aircraft made a prototype of a powered version of their Hamilcar glider. This was so successful the air ministry had it manufactured by Blackburn as the Beverley. This became the standard transport aircraft for the RAF in the fifties. Non of the technology in it was beyond the industry in 1935. The Beverley used Centaurus engines but it could have been made with the Hercules.
Non of the technology in it was beyond the industry in 1935.
Only if you don't look at the engines.
Yes, the 1950 version had 2x 2850 hp engines.
A 1940 version would have at the most, 2 x 1290 hp with the Hercules. But that means that a number of Beaufighters won't have engines.
More likely you'd have the Bristol Taurus engine at 2 x 1000ish hp.
That means a 1940 version would have less than half the enginepower of the OTL one. At least, by assuming there weren't heaps of Hercules/R-2800/whatever high performance engine lying around for installment in a transport aircraft.
I'm not exactly an engineer (far from it), so everything above could be wrong, so if anyone stands to correct me, please do.