Wi: Fairey Fulmar

Why does it have to be a one seater? The RN was pretty into night combat, would think the Fulmar could be worked into a decent night fighter, so as to improve and expand on that area of expertise.
 
Hercules engined Spitfire developed by Fairey. In 1940 it would be the best carrier fighter in service and even by 1945 would be a nasty prospect for anyone.

cc618449cd91581055e2772832e59f2e.jpg

Dimensionally it is a larger engine, it is 38cm taller and 62cm wider, it is also 131kg heavier in dry weight. While you would get some of this difference back from not needing radiators, the radiators are located much further back on the airframe which if anything would make the CoG issues of putting a significantly heavier engine right on the nose of the aircraft. That's not even taking into account the significant engineering difficulties of having to re-engineer the entire fuselage from the probably the cockpit forwards to suit the much larger engine, and the strengthening that would be required due to weight changes.

You would be better off starting from Scratch.
 
Dimensionally it is a larger engine, it is 38cm taller and 62cm wider, it is also 131kg heavier in dry weight. While you would get some of this difference back from not needing radiators, the radiators are located much further back on the airframe which if anything would make the CoG issues of putting a significantly heavier engine right on the nose of the aircraft. That's not even taking into account the significant engineering difficulties of having to re-engineer the entire fuselage from the probably the cockpit forwards to suit the much larger engine, and the strengthening that would be required due to weight changes.

You would be better off starting from Scratch.

Hercules is also shorter, meaning that weight's influence on the CoG will be antennuated vs. a long engine it should be replacing. A thing that Lavotchkin and people at Kawasaki took advantage from when redesigning the LaGG-3 and Ki-61 into La-5 and Ki-100, respectively. Both 'source' A/C being outfitted with radiators behind the CoG.
Spitfire's fuselage just behind the engine was much taller than the Merlin, or even the Griffon, so Hercules in the nose will not spoil the horizontal lines. As for the strengthening of the front fuselage to carry a heavier engine - it was done in the OTL, 1st when going from 1-stage Merlins to the 2-stage versions, later when going from Merlin to Griffon.
 

Ramontxo

Donor
Also a shorter engine would probably improve the forward and down visibility for the pilot. And that would've help when landing in a carrier.
 
Radial engine for it?
Just Leo previously suggested twinning Bristol's Perseus radial to create an 18-cylinder 3,040 in³ displacement engine similar to Pratt & Whitney's R-2800 Double Wasp, he referred to it as the the Bristol Orion. To achieve that however would require the Air Ministry to decide that they wanted an engine like that and then heavily lean on Bristol's board and management to get them to develop it.
 
Just Leo previously suggested twinning Bristol's Perseus radial to create an 18-cylinder 3,040 in³ displacement engine similar to Pratt & Whitney's R-2800 Double Wasp, he referred to it as the the Bristol Orion. To achieve that however would require the Air Ministry to decide that they wanted an engine like that and then heavily lean on Bristol's board and management to get them to develop it.

The 18-cyl radial, that will be using some parts of existing British radials, has many merits. Eg. 'twin Mercury' - again a 3040 cu in engine, should be capable of making of 1850+ HP already on 87 oct fuel, and another 100-150 HP on early 100 oct. Not too shabby, and not too big a diameter. 'Twin Pegasus' - 3500 cu in, 2000 HP on 87 oct fuel.
The 'twin Perseus' will be a sleeve-valve engine, thus later in coming vs. derivatives of Mercury or Pegasus. The OTL Centaurus was not that far away in dimensions & appearance. Say - Napier folds, or it is bought by Bristol, meaning Sabre is not concieved, and engineers coming from Napier can be 'thrown' at Centaurus?
 
General characteristics

Crew: 1
Length: 32 ft (9.76 m)
Wingspan: 38 ft 2 in (11.63 m)
Height: 10 ft 2 in (3.09 m)
Wing area: 230 ft² (21.4 m²)
Empty weight: 4,190 lb (1,900 kg)
Loaded weight: 5,400 lb (2,449 kg)
Powerplant: 1 × Bristol Mercury IX nine-cylinder radial engine, 840 hp (627 kW)
Performance

Maximum speed: 275 knots (316 mph, 509 km/h) at 16,000 ft (4,875 m)
Service ceiling: 32,500 ft [5] (9,910 m)
Wing loading: 23.5 lb/ft² (88.8 kg/m²)
Power/mass: 0.156 hp/lb (0.256 kW/kg)
Time to 20,000 ft (6,100 m): 11 min
Armament

Guns: Eight 0.303-in (7.7-mm) Browning machine guns

The original specs for the F.3/34
 
Gloster gorshawk MK 1 single seat Fighter specs

Crew: 1
Range: 850 miles
Engine: 1 RR Merlin x
Speed: 350 mph
Armament: six 50 cal Vickers HMG
 
The 18-cylinder radial, that will be using some parts of existing British radials, has many merits e.g. 'twin Mercury' - again a 3,040 in³ engine, should be capable of making of 1,850+ hp already on 87 octane fuel, and another 100-150 hp on early 100 octane. Not too shabby, and not too big a diameter. 'Twin Pegasus' - 3,500 in³, 2,000 hp on 87 octand fuel.

The 'twin Perseus' will be a sleeve-valve engine, thus later in coming vs. derivatives of Mercury or Pegasus. The our timeline Centaurus was not that far away in dimensions and appearance. Say - Napier folds, or it is bought by Bristol, meaning Sabre is not concieved, and engineers coming from Napier can be 'thrown' at Centaurus?
Without going back to the threads I think he chose the Perseus for technical reasons, he also thinned out the engine range. As for Napier & Son that might do more harm than good. As I understand things they were good at developing new experimental products but not so great at the production engineering side of things, case in point Bristol having to second staff to them to help get the Sabre to work properly which slowed their own work. You might be better off simply having them go to English Electric earlier.
 
Without going back to the threads I think he chose the Perseus for technical reasons, he also thinned out the engine range. As for Napier & Son that might do more harm than good. As I understand things they were good at developing new experimental products but not so great at the production engineering side of things, case in point Bristol having to second staff to them to help get the Sabre to work properly which slowed their own work. You might be better off simply having them go to English Electric earlier.

I will not venture to quess why Just Leo picked the Perseus as a base. Mercury is/was my pick because of favorable timing - Bristol can twin it it well before mid-1930s, before there is a workable sleeve-valve engine around.
Perhaps I was not crystal clear about Napier - say, Bristol buys them, Sabre is cancelled, Napier's engineers are redeployed to work on Centaurus. Also cancels out the need for Bristol to help Napier as per OTL, making this a double gain for Ceantaurus timing.
 
I suppose it depends on how much of their problems was caused by the engineers themselves and how much by the working environment. If it was more the former, possibly influenced somewhat by the latter, then I'd have to question how much help they might be.
 
Going after a 1 ton 2000 HP engine that will be using sleeve valves (1st time by Napier) probaly didn't help either. 1st Perseus engines were good for 580 HP only.
We can recall that Bristol made four production- and service-worthy sleeve-valve engines before Centaurus. The years of experience were no small thing - unlike Napier, Bristol did the whole '1st crawl, than walk, than run' thing.
 
Best bet is to leverage the 2 RAF fighter designs from 1938 and use the same engine etc

Sea Hurricane and/or Seafire but start a lot earlier - there are several opportunities for this to have happened.

My prefered route would be to turn the Fulmar into a Strike plane (leveraging its legacy of being related to the Battle) capable of carrying a torpedo or bomb load similar to a Swordfish but with a vastly improved performance and range relative to the string bag ,plus a fighter planes armament allowing it to have a secondary fighter role.

This would allow all of a given carriers strike planes to perform CAP or at least that would be the intention - not such a crazy idea given the Dauntless was intended to have a secondary role a a CAP Fighter with 2 forward firing .50 cal MGs

For the pure fighter role my preference has always been the Seafire - start the process in 1938 and by 1941 it should have matured a lot further than it did during the Salerno landings when it was operating from light carriers with only months of real development - keep the rear mounted fuel tanks used by PR Spitfires to improve its range - by Midwar it would be a very mature carrier fighter - possibly diverging from the Spitfire at this point.

The advantage would be that the Seafire can leverage the development of the Spitfire and maintain its edge.
 
One of the problems with Napier was the factory was an Edwardian museum. Some of the main machine tools were 50 years old. The machinists could produce one off hand built engines to specifications but couldn't manage to produce production line engines.
 
One of the problems with Napier was the factory was an Edwardian museum. Some of the main machine tools were 50 years old. The machinists could produce one off hand built engines to specifications but couldn't manage to produce production line engines.

Was it Napier who were degrading their sleeve valves by pushing the carts across cobbled roads within the factory while the valves were still cooling?

Or was that Bristol?
 
Top