The Tiffy was Pissy?

[MIflyer]

I guess y'all can tell that, based on a number of books written by Typhoon pilots, I have a poor opinion of the Hawker Typhoon. I am not alone in this opinion, but the author of this video is even more negative on the aircraft.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9Gu-xY9UWs

 

[Shortround6]

I have seen the video and it is hard to disagree with it in general.
There may be some details that are wrong but everything that he says happened seems to have happened.
Problem is that few books, articles give the numbers of incidents for each problem (assuming that there were witnesses) or put those in context with the number of planes available at the time. One book may go through one or two of the problems but not all the problems so you have to read more books.

Now this is the first time I have heard that they had problems with the horizontal stabilizer/elevators. I have read that the fighter bomber versions were modified in the field to use Tempest horizontal stabilizer/elevators about the time they went to 1000lb bombs. Now was it because of the 1000lb bombs or the two things just coincided?
There weren't a lot of them around in the first year .

Typhoon IB Performance Data

Typhoon Performance Data, wartime flight trials and reports of Typhoon aircraft. Typhoon Performance Testing .

www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org

250 built between September 1941 and June 1942 so when you start figuring out how many crashed because of X and how many crashed because of Y and how crashed because of X in the first year it starts to sound really bad.

 

[SaparotRob]

I do not watch this channel. Some of his clickbait titles are offensive to me so I won't feed the algorithm. I'm not even talking about his B-17 video, which I watched. An unmemorable show with airplane porn. However well researched his work is, the obvious "Click me! Click me! Write enraged replies and boost my subscriptions!" titles annoy me. So I exercise my freedom of choice and ignore the channel. I'll wait for Ed Nash, Rex's Hangar or Military Aviation History.

 

[pbehn]

I do not watch this channel. Some of his clickbait titles are offensive to me so I won't feed the algorithm. I'm not even talking about his B-17 video, which I watched. An unmemorable show with airplane porn. However well researched his work is, the obvious "Click me! Click me! Write enraged replies and boost my subscriptions!" titles annoy me. So I exercise my freedom of choice and ignore the channel. I'll wait for Ed Nash, Rex's Hangar or Military Aviation History.

There is another Youtuber who dumps his product here. He has asked the same question twice on his comments section and I have answered twice, which shows his questions are just for show, he doesnt read replies. That being the case, why would I watch any more of his videos.

 

[MIflyer]

I read a few books about Typhoons, one of which was written by a pilot who actually liked them. He had washed out of Spitfire ops and was sent to be a ferry pilot, where he became one of the very few that liked to ferry them, then moving on to Typhoon ops. He later went on to fly Tempests. But he freely admits that the Typhoon had a terrible reputation at the beginning and upon delivering one to one base was lectured that he should not have flown a pattern since anything that delayed getting a Typhoon back on the ground was too dangerous. He also freely admitted that crossing the Channel in a Typhoon with a misbehaving engine was considered to be so dangerous that some pilots decided they would rather risk ending up in a Stalag. If the engine quit the chance of surviving a ditching was very low; he managed to do it once only because of the many hours he had in the aircraft and since the engine was failing slowly he was able to set the trim for as much a tail low ditching as possible. In contrast he says that the Tempest ditched fine; the problem was the wing and not the airscoop. He ended the war as a squadron commander of a Tempest unit.

In contrast to the Typhoon it seems the Westland Whirlwind pilots were willing to risk a channel crossing even with one turning and one burning.

I had not heard of the wing blowing off due to a cannon malfunction; I don't think I've ever heard of a wing get blown off due to that kind of thing.

And not only that, but the prototype was almost stolen by a downed Luftwaffe pilot who escaped and for a very brief period was able to impersonate a Norweigan test pilot.

 

[WARSPITER]

I do not watch this channel. Some of his clickbait titles are offensive to me so I won't feed the algorithm. I'm not even talking about his B-17 video, which I watched. An unmemorable show with airplane porn. However well researched his work is, the obvious "Click me! Click me! Write enraged replies and boost my subscriptions!" titles annoy me. So I exercise my freedom of choice and ignore the channel. I'll wait for Ed Nash, Rex's Hangar or Military Aviation History.

That's what it comes down to. It's mostly feeding on exaggerated stories - those which have grown over time.

In the case of these kind of 'appraisals' the actual record of the item being lambasted is disregarded completely
or is said to be somehow overblown(DbD approach - degrade by demeaning).

It's a normal media thing today to choose only one side of a story which will allow social media bandwagoning
to thrive, in other words, promoting populist bowel movements.

As far as balance goes I think of it more as a see saw approach. The story is weighing down one end and there is
no counterweight on the other at all.

 

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

The Typhoon had a design flaw like the early Bf109F causing structural failure near the tail, in both cases the fix was simple once the problem had been understood. The main Typhoon problem was the engine performance and availability.

Typhoon cumulative production was 227 by end June, 448 by end September, 714 by end December 1942 and 890 by end February 1943. The RAF Census end February 1943 says Typhoon deliveries were 832 of which 79 had been lost and 19 converted to instructional types, 271 were in squadrons 232 were in storage, the rest under repair, modification or doing experimental work. Census Typhoon situation, thanks to the engine situation a large number of older airframes were turned into spares.
Feb 43 Effective 734, lost 98 including Cat E 79
Mar 43 Effective 834, lost 117 including Cat E 101
Apr 43 Effective 922, lost 149 including Cat E 133
May 43 Effective 935, lost 212 including Cat E 152
Jun 43 Effective 897, lost 338 including Cat E 277
Jul 43 Effective 944, lost 413 including Cat E 354
Aug 43 Effective 919, lost 514 including Cat E 452
Sep 43 Effective 913, lost 603 including Cat E 539
Oct 43 Effective 971, lost 657 including Cat E 589
Nov 43 Effective 984, lost 748 including Cat E 632
Dec 43 Effective 1,060, lost 775 including Cat E 661

So either the RAF was losing an average of 100 Typhoons a month June to September 1943 inclusive or there was quite a culling, all up 387 written off in the 4 months. The Fighter Command Losses books have 72 losses for the period

Cumulative production totals Sabre II and Typhoon, then Sabre II engines under repair and Typhoon airframes in storage as of end of month
Month / Sabre II / Typhoon / Sabre under or awaiting repair / Typhoon airframes in storage
Jan-43 / 1007 / 805 / 317 / 166
Feb-43 / 1115 / 890 / 352 / 158
Mar-43 / 1222 / 994 / 417 / 158
Apr-43 / Unknown / 1097 / 482 / Unknown
May-43 / 1334 / 1200 / 595 / 244
Jun-43 / 1391 / 1264 / 643 / 183
Jul-43 / 1482 / 1357 / 735 / 153
Aug-43 / 1586 / 1437 / 861 / 149
Sep-43 / 1695 / 1547 / 887 / 304
Oct-43 / 1805 / 1645 / 901 / 176
Nov-43 / 1913 / 1753 / 897 / 206
Dec-43 / 2030 / 1851 / 871 / 265

Writing off, scrapping, reducing to spares several hundred Typhoon airframes would be needed to ensure all existing airframes had an engine plus allow for engine repairs, overhaul and reserves and the newly arriving Tempests. I do not think there was enough wrong with the early Typhoon airframes alone to require scrapping, it was engine supply.

Put it another way, as of the end of 1943, there were 1,159 (2,030 - 871) Sabre II engines available for or had been lost with Typhoons, there were 265 Typhoon airframes in storage, so assuming a maximum of 1,424 (1,159+265) Typhoons with engines or as airframes requires the scrapping or reassigning to maintenance airframe status of around 427 airframes to balance the books and this ignores there would be stand alone Sabre II engine reserves.

Leigh-Mallory wrote a letter on the Typhoon situation as of 17 December 1943.
41 with ADGB and TAF, 9 with sliding hood
56 with 41 Group including 31 with sliding hood
36 under repair
34 experimental
701 broken down
289 in purgatory storage, no engines available until September 1944
228 lost on operations.
428 require sliding hood modification apart from the 289 held in purgatory. Rocket modification is slow due to squadrons being reluctant to lose aircraft and bad weather.

End December 1943 there were 114 Typhoon Instructional aircraft, versus 120 Spitfires and 174 Hurricanes, so the lack of engines saw Typhoons preferentially made instructional, but that was not enough and converting several hundred early airframes to spares during 1943 was the best way to salvage something from the program and bring engine and airframe numbers into alignment, I doubt the 701 figure quoted by Leigh-Mallory though, it would imply a Sabre engine reserve of around 400 (114 instructional airframes, 300 airframes reduced to spares to balance numbers, another 400 reduced to spares to create the engine reserve)

The first sliding hoods were actually rebuilds from older Typhoons which had been in store at Glosters, followed by introduction on the production line (intermittent to start with) and finally a mass modification program on Typhoons in service (around 400). Tempest tailplanes were introduced with MN307 in late February 1944 but only a small number could be initially fitted with 4-blade propellers which were not normal until around MN600 in mid April 1944. As far as I am aware the fitting of the Tempest tail was tied in with the 4 blade propeller. It looks like the first 1,000 pound bombs were dropped on 23 April 1944. (AIR 16/1036)

Apart from the 2 prototypes Hawker built R8198-8200 and R8220-31, all other Typhoons built by Gloster. Hawker 5 Ia, 10 Ib, Gloster, 100 Ia 3,200 Ib.

Gloster built 1 Typhoon in June 1941, another 20 August to October 1941, then series production from December.

Contract B12148/39 Hawker, sub contracted to Gloster requisition 82/E1/39 for 105 Typhoon Ia (5 Hawker, 100 Gloster), 410 Typhoon Ib (10 Hawker, 400 Gloster). R serials. Most taken on charge by end September 1942 but some as late as April 1943. The Gloster R8xxx serials began being taken on charge mid July 1942.

Contract ACFT943 Gloster requisition TA1/E1/40 for 700 Typhoon Ib (DN, EJ serials), requisition TA3/E1/41 for 1400 Typhoon Ib (JP, JR, MM, MN, MP serials) further requisitions against this order for remaining Typhoons built (145 PD, 255 RB, 300 SW serials), by the looks of things the PD serials were 2/E11/41, the RB serials 3/E11/43.

DN serials taken on charge from late October 1942, JP serials from mid June 1943, MM serials from third week of December 1943, PD serials from late July 1944, RB serials ceased being taken on charge in early January 1945. According to the RAF Contract cards the first PD serials delivered in late July 1944, the final MP serials in the second half of August. Somewhat different to Francis K Mason's report.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

I do not watch this channel. Some of his clickbait titles are offensive to me so I won't feed the algorithm. I'm not even talking about his B-17 video, which I watched. An unmemorable show with airplane porn. However well researched his work is, the obvious "Click me! Click me! Write enraged replies and boost my subscriptions!" titles annoy me. So I exercise my freedom of choice and ignore the channel. I'll wait for Ed Nash, Rex's Hangar or Military Aviation History.

Y'know, Rob, I was going to watch it, but you make a really good point here. Trolls should be starved.

 

[MIflyer]

Bill Gunston said that part of the Typhoon's engine troubles came from the ground crews monkeying with the boost controls to get more power at lower altitudes. Given that it was not much good as a high altitude interceptor and the need to be faster at lower altitudes to intercept those FW-190 jabos, I could see how that could occur. At least some of that was done on the P-51D's.

 

[fannum]

Key thing is the Typhoon was rushed into production to counter the FW190's performance. As always, weaknesses have to be sorted pragmatically, and the Brits had fewer resources ... almost as limited as the Germans and Japanese, with a reluctance to continually beg the US for materials, technology or design help. Remember that virtually EVERY man was in uniform or some form of service. There were many other designs considered, and the Typhoon had fewer issues.


All pilots who wrote accounts of flying them knew their promises and their flaws, and still held it in high esteem. Read David Ince's perceptive books, especially Brotherhood of the Skies, for a detailed account ... especially of the fighter bomber role ... for which it was not designed, but in which it excelled. I dated a girl whose Mother's first husband was one of Patton's tankers in the sweep from Normandy, and killed in the later stages in Germany. His letters are full of high praise for the RAF ground support, more so than the USAAF. Put things in context ... not just someone's selective research to enable his clicks.


T

 

[MIflyer]

Key thing is the Typhoon was rushed into production to counter the FW190's performance.

Yes, and Cocky Dundas, the first Typhoon Squadron Commander, pushed for it to go into service and then admitted that it was a mistake to have done so - it was too early.
Admittedly, for all its faults, once you got across the Channel without drowning, the Tiffy was preferable to either the Spit or Hurricane as a fighter bomber. It probably was almost as good as a P-40N.