those big 10ft props would not feather also, i'll try to scan a small article I have called "flying the Whirlwind" by a guy who flew 33 different ones on ops
gotta scanner so here is pt 1of the article.
"We thought we were on our way to becoming Canadian fighter pilots on Spitfires or at least Hurricanes; but at the end of the course when our squadron listings were posted ten RCAF sergeant pilots were to be sent to 263 squadron."what was 263 squadron we asked. Where was it and what .
Did it fly?'' . Somebody thought that 263 flew Whirlwinds. What are Whirlwinds?'' we wanted to know. No one at the OTU, including the instructors seemed to know anything about the Whirlwind because it was on the secret list All kinds of rumours began circulating, strange stories about this odd machine, heard second- or third-hand. Fairy tales would have been a better description. Other than it having two engine's the originators had no real knowledge of this fine aeroplane. One claim was that it could not fly on one engine. Later I would fly one back to base on one engine. Twice! Another story had In the event of a nose over ,the 4 cannons which were mounted virtually in your lap. would break loose and separate the top half of your body from the bottom half. Not so! 1 would seriously bend Whirlwind P7108 by running off the runway into boggy ground, flipping the aircraft on its back. I ' was unhurt except for one toe. No sooner had the aircraft come to rest in- - and then a whole gang of airmen appeared and mightily lifted up the tail. l pulled the pin on my Sutton harness and landed square on my head. Crawling out from under, I vented my anger by giving the aircraft a mighty kick-breaking -my toe.
This kept me off flying for a couple of days. Of course, expecting Spitfires or Hurricanes, we knew that we wouldn't like the Whirlwind at all. The night before we were to have a formal interview with the CO, we new RCAF pilots decided enmasse to tell him we did not wish to fly twins and to demand a posting to a Canadian single-engine fighter unit. The next morning needless to say, Pugh, the CO, tore off great strips from our -hides and threatened us with dire penalties-court martial and other unpleasantness. We would all fly the Whirlwind, he firmly stated. He guaranteed that we would grow to love it. As we waited for transport to take us back to the field wondering what our fate was to be, Pugh's Whirlwind appeared. dove down on us, he pulled up into a series of upward rolls and treated us to a series of low-level aerobatics-the likes of which l would never see again. Maybe, we thought, it won't be too bad having to fly this strange aeroplane
It was cleans sleek, and relatively small for a twin-engined aircraft, with a forty-five-foot wingspan and a length of thirty-one feet, six inches. The fuselage was mainly of magnesium, which made it a little different from contemporary aircraft. A low-wing monoplane, it had very smooth surfaces and of was built in three major sections. The engines were mounted on the wing centre section. Leading edged slats were installed initially, but these were permantly locked as a result of a fatal accident. One of the slats broke loose ; during a high-speed stall, causing the aircraft to crash.
The engines were Rolls-Royce V12 Peregrines rated at 885 hp at 3,000 rpm, driving ten-foot diameter variable-speed propellers, which could not be feathered, There was a 67-gallon fuel tank in each wing feeding the adjacent engine. but there was no crossover from one tank to the other. The lack of feathering and crossover feed were two very unsatisfactory features. The throttle, pitch, fuel, and mixture controls were hydraulically operated by the exactor system. Armament was four 20-mm Hispano cannon mounted in y the nose, immediately in front of the cockpit-right in your lap-with sixty rounds per drum-fed gun. The Whirlwind was the first Allied monoplane allied fighter to be designed around cannon armament.
The cockpit was roomy and well organized for its time. The seat was amply protected by armour plate. and the windshield was bulletproof. There was a substantial crash pylon right behind the pilot's head in case of a bit of unexpected (but extreme) nose-down tail-up attitude. Access to the cockpit was by a three-foot retractable ladder, stowed in the fuselage during flight.
…....... What was it like to fly the Whirlwind? I can say that it was scary for those first few flights. There was no two-seat version for dual instruction, no way of learning how to manage an aircraft with two engines how to taxi it,"