Bristol aircraft after the Blenheim

[Thumpalumpacus]

I don't know, but Packard had enough to power all but the earliest units of Canada's CC&F Hurricanes and all of its production of DHC Mosquitos and Victory Lancasters.

If there is no Beaufighter, Australia still has the need. The Mosquito would do nicely.

I wonder how they'd hold up under the climate conditions. No doubt they could work from some islands without too much issue, but rain forest is hard on aircraft, even metal, much less wood.

 

[yulzari]

The Blenheim was always a lot of aeroplane, engines and crew to carry 4x250lb bombs about. Any worthwhile improvement was not going to help. In fact it got heavier and slower over time. If you have to use Mercury engines then wrap the bomb load around a new smaller airframe. Or 2 single engined close support types.

The Westland Whirlwind, with Mercuries and fuel in lieu of the wing radiators, would be an impressive low level performer with the OTL alternatives of 12x0.303, 4x20mm drum Hispanos, 4x20mm belt Hispanos or 40mm S Gun in addition to a similar bomb load to the Blenheim. At least they could defend themselves unlike OTL Blenheims. But then we invoke the Whirlwind mafia.

 

[MikeMeech]

Too bad for the RAF. Both Canada and Australia produced the Mosquito - so they'll take what they need from their domestic production. The first Canadian Mosquitos were completed in Sept 1941.

The first Australian Mosquito was produced in July 1943, totally 212 aircraft built at Bankstown. I see no reason the Australians can't follow the Canadian example and start earlier in time to replace their lost Beaufighters. Getting Packard engines may be logistically tricky, but any transports from the US West Coast bringing engines to Australia can sail freely until Dec 1941, and then stay well south afterward.

Hi
According to 'Canadian Aircraft since 1909' by Molson & Taylor, page 254, the prototype Canadian built Mosquito (KB300) first flew from Downsview on 23 September, 1942. Mosquito production was slow to build up, about 83 accepted from DHC during 1943, while about 424 were accepted during 1944. It is unlikely that Canada let alone Australia would have been producing these aircraft much earlier than they did due to the various difficulties that had to be overcome.

Mike

 

[Admiral Beez]

It is unlikely that Canada let alone Australia would have been producing these aircraft much earlier than they did due to the various difficulties that had to be overcome.

Good point. I suppose we'd better keep the Beaufighter then or something as good. I just want Bristol to hurry up on engines.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Same drill as with similar threads: once they have contract for the Blenheim (September 1935), what kind of aircraft Bristol should've been designing and producing?

Thinking postwar. Since no one during the first five years after WW2 at Hawker-Siddeley (incl. Gloster) or Vickers-Supermarine was capable of making a jet fighter equal or better than the Soviets and Americans this presents an opportunity to Bristol to match the MiG-15 and F-86. It's a tall order though, as the fastest jet Bristol's designer Leslie Frise has made is the Jet Provost trainer. Mind you, Gloster's aircraft before the Meteor was the Gladiator, so generational jumps aren't unheard of.

 

[MiTasol]

In 1940, the deficiencies of the Blenheim were that it was too slow, and its defensive armament was ineffective. Bigger engines, a narrower fuselage and deletion of the turret all were good ideas, leaving us something that would look a lot like a Beaufighter.

I am looking up alternate engines for the Blenheim and the Canadian made Bolingbrokes. Canadians tested P&W Twin Wasp Juniors (R-1535). The Hercules does not seem to have been considered.

The Blenheim was to be replaced by the Buckingham, with two Centaurus engines. This was first flown in 1943. They did 330mph at 12,000ft, and offered no advantage over a Mosquito. The aircraft had a dorsal turret, and a Luftwaffe like ventral pod. I believe they worked out that a turret would take 60mph off the top speed of a Mosquito. Delete the stuff sticking out, and it may have had the same top speed as the Mosquito. It's bomb load was 4,000lb, substantially more than most Mosquito variants.

If Bristol could not get Centaurus engines into service, could they be persuaded to use somebody else's engine, like the Double Wasp? These were used on most of the Vickers Warwicks. It might have been a good way to soup up Beaufighters, although there are some obvious political issues.

was replaced by the Beaufort

 

[EwenS]

was replaced by the Beaufort

The Beaufort was not a replacement for the Blenheim as a light bomber.

The Beaufort was designed to replace the Vickers Vildebeest in the torpedo bomber role with Coastal Command.

 

[Shortround6]

Good point. I suppose we'd better keep the Beaufighter then or something as good. I just want Bristol to hurry up on engines.

They were not produced at the same factory/s, or used the same design/engineering teams.

This would be like having Curtiss-Wright stop making P-40s (and other things) to concentrate on making R-1820s, R-2600s and R-3350s.

 

[Shortround6]

The Westland Whirlwind, with Mercuries and fuel in lieu of the wing radiators, would be an impressive low level performer

It would have been impressively bad.

The Mercury had almost 3 times the frontal area of Peregrine which was way more than enough cancel out the radiators. British radial engine cowling design was NOT in the fore front of engine installations. The British got there but not until late in WW II. A 9 cylinder radial is just about the worst way to package an engine (arrange the cylinders) of a given level of power for streamlining.

 

[Admiral Beez]

The Beaufort was designed to replace the Vickers Vildebeest in the torpedo bomber role with Coastal Command.

I understand that, but with the Hampden already serving in the torpedo role, why wasn't it considered as the Vildebeest's replacement?

Or, perhaps the Hampden was not torpedo equipped until after the Beaufort?

 

[Shortround6]

I understand that, but with the Hampden already serving in the torpedo role, why wasn't it considered as the Vildebeest's replacement?

timing.

The Hampden was one of the "big Three" bombers of Bomber Command in 1938-39.
The Hampden only got shuffled of to "torpedo plane land" in 1942 when the British had 3 four engine bombers in production and they were trying to figure out what else they could use the Hamden for.

The Hampden was NOT serving in the torpedo plane role in 1939-40-41.

There was a lot of political infighting go on. The RAF claimed it could do a lot of things and should get a bigger piece of the budget than the Navy and the Army.
They were putting a lot of requirements or features on their bombers to make them more attractive, like bomb bays that would hold torpedoes, made them sound good to the politicians. Like the two torpedoes in the bomb bay of a Manchester. Useful when they turned the Manchester into the Lancaster but I am not even sure they tried to fit a single torpedo into a Manchester in trials, let alone drop one. Most sources say the requirement was dropped early the design stage.

It was all "pie in the sky" wishful thinking.
Because in 1937-38 'existing torpedoes could not be released at 150mph from 200ft.'
And it took quite a while for that to be sorted out.

The Beaufort nearly didn't make into production. The RAF didn't want to buy a dedicated torpedo dropper. That would take away from the RAF's "true role" of bombing the enemy into submission by itself without the need for navy and army. It was only with a few modifications to the bomb bay of the Beaufort that made it suitable for carrying bombs "if needed" that the Beaufort made it into production.
The Idea of using Hampdens with their 4000lb plus bomb load capacity to drop 1700lb torpedoes was not going to go very far with the RAF except as an excuse to get more appropriations vs the navy.

 

[Admiral Beez]

The Beaufort nearly didn't make into production. The RAF didn't want to buy a dedicated torpedo dropper.

It is incredible to me that a maritime nation needing to protect both the homeland and coastal imperial territory such as Malaya, Ceylon and Australasia from naval assault did not see the need for a bomber optimized, if not dedicated for torpedo strikes. It's a wonder the Vilderbeest was specified as a torpedo bomber in the 1920s.

 

[Shortround6]

Same drill as with similar threads: once they have contract for the Blenheim (September 1935), what kind of aircraft Bristol should've been designing and producing? For the upcoming war, and up until ~1955 when the Mach 2 is the next 'target' for the aircraft-producing companies. Engines of the day (you can axe something to speed up a bit something else, within reasonable boundaries), aerodynamics of the day. Ditto for materials, guns, other weapons and electronics.
Upgrading the Blenheim is also okay.

Unfortunately you have several historical disconnects in the Bristol timeline. One was death of Frank Barnwell, their chief designer in 1938 midway through the work on the Beaufort.
Then you had the British government thinking that they could buy American light and medium bombers and just putz around with medium bombers while they concentrated on heavy bombers. The whole "Successor to the Beaufort" was kept cooking on the back burner for far too long and came out overcooked with too much stirring of the pot and too many ingredients and not enough thought as to what they were actually making.
The Buckingham was a bland stew of an airplane.

A fixed battery of machine guns in the nose instead of a gun pack meant that the bomb aimer was in that German like gondola under the fuselage while the single turret out the top was not really enough to defend against 1944 German fighters. The American A-26 used a glass nose for bombing and kept the gun nosed aircraft for strafing instead of trying to combine the two missions. in one airplane.
The fuselage was too big for high speed (Mosquito replacement) and too small for other roles. The 4,000lb bomb load good but not outstanding. and so on. The British government didn't help when they couldn't decide it they wanted it or not and instead of ordering a large batch in large numbers or canceling the whole thing they ordered it into production at 25 planes a month. Bristol themselves thought that was an uneconomic route to take. Either build more or if not happy with design build a few prototypes at time to sort it out.

Then you have one of the infamous British defense papers in 1945/46 with one of their "10 year plans" that thought there would be no war after WW II for 10 years so all kinds of defense work was shut down, and then restarted slowly as it seems that the Russians hadn't read the plan. Granted Britain was broke and needed to be very careful what they spent money on.

Britain had also flubbed the commercial market. While concentrating on war they had let the US dominate the air transport market and when they tried to figure out were to go in the post war market they believed their own advertising and thought they could compete in every category of transport aircraft with the US companies and even some areas that the US ignored. They also ignored the thousands of surplus transport aircraft about to flood the market.

Two of the Bristol post war aircraft.

It took them 12 years to build 214 of the Bristol 170 twin. An interesting airplane of unique abilities but not what the British needed to generate large overseas cash sales.
The less said about the bigger the plane the better.
Like many British companies they were looking at commercial work starting in 1943-44 but a lot of their assumptions turned out to be wrong. They overlooked the proliferation of large, soon to be ex-military airfields around the world, and emphasized short landing and take-off performance.

 

[Shortround6]

It is incredible to me that a maritime nation needing to protect both the homeland and coastal imperial territory such as Malaya, Ceylon and Australasia from naval assault did not see the need for a bomber optimized, if not dedicated for torpedo strikes. It's a wonder the Vilderbeest was specified as a torpedo bomber in the 1920s.

Much like the RAF gave unsuitable aircraft to Coastal Command, the RAF did not see the protection of those outlying areas as their job.

Many (not all) RAF officers saw their mission as the establishing of the RAF as the nation's premier military service, displacing the Navy (army was to be dropped to No. 3 position).

In the mean time the RAF was suck up as money as it could from the treasury.

The lack of co-operation was astounding considering what was going in 1918. But at that time the flying services were subordinate to the Navy and the Army. The Flying services were supporting the Navy and the Army and not trying to win the war on their own.
The RAF wanted to do it's own thing and be seen as a war winning force, and they felt they could not do that being a "support" force. They had two jobs, defend Britain from the air (enemy bombers) and destroy the enemies ability to make war (destroy his factories) and anything else was a distraction. Sometimes a necessary one as they fought for more aircraft instead of ships for the navy or troops/equipment for the army. The whole "bomb the tribesmen" thing was a way to show that the RAF could do the pacifying job cheaper than ground troops.
Not to support the ground troops in actual combat.

 

[Howard Gibson]

Too bad for the RAF. Both Canada and Australia produced the Mosquito - so they'll take what they need from their domestic production. The first Canadian Mosquitos were completed in Sept 1941.

The first Australian Mosquito was produced in July 1943, totally 212 aircraft built at Bankstown. I see no reason the Australians can't follow the Canadian example and start earlier in time to replace their lost Beaufighters. Getting Packard engines may be logistically tricky, but any transports from the US West Coast bringing engines to Australia can sail freely until Dec 1941, and then stay well south afterward.

The problem was not the demand for Packard Merlins. It was demand for Mosquitos. The Americans in the Pacific wanted PR Mosquitos, but there were too many people waiting in line for them.

 

[EwenS]

I understand that, but with the Hampden already serving in the torpedo role, why wasn't it considered as the Vildebeest's replacement?

View attachment 671579

Or, perhaps the Hampden was not torpedo equipped until after the Beaufort?

The Hampden became a torpedo bomber in 1942 because of a shortage of Beauforts.

489 squadron formed in Aug 1941 but any Beauforts it received in the first few months were quickly withdrawn for use by existing Beaufort units. It then used Blenheim IVF (with the gun pack) until Hampdens were allocated in March 1942. It then retrained to drop torpedoes before flying its first torpedo mission in July. 415 squadron formed at the same and again never received its full complement of Beauforts and so remained non-operational. It began receiving Hampdens from Jan 1942 before flying its first missions in April.

One reason for the shortage of Beauforts was the decision in Dec 1941 to send two Beaufort squadrons (22 & 217) to Ceylon in view of the Japanese threat. It took some time to bring these units up to full strength and to organise their movement, and then the aircraft were hijacked for use in the Med on the way out, where the Beaufort was also in high demand due to attrition.

144 and 455 squadrons were already equipped with Hampdens when they (and a number of other squadrons) were transferred from Bomber Command to Coastal Command in April 1942. Again they had to retrain for the new role.

144 squadron converted to Beaufighters in Jan 1943 on its return from Russia while 455 and 489 soldiered on until Oct/Nov 1943 before also converting to the Beaufighter. 415 converted to Wellingtons and Albacores at the same time.

In the Mediterranean the shortage of Beauforts saw the Wellinton equipped 38 squadron switched to the torpedo bomber role from Jan 1942. Later in the year it was joined by the Wellington equipped 458 squadron and the B-26A Marauder equipped 14 squadron.

I'm puzzled by the caption on the photo you posted of that "32 OCU" Hamden. AIUI it was 32 OTU that transferred from the U.K. to Canada but that didn't happen until Aug 1941, and then the unit was Beaufort equipped. Hampdens were only received in May June 1942. (By the end of 1943 it had 52 Hampdens on charge along with other types.) The aircraft markings would suggest that this was an early PR photo from around that time.

Flying Torpedoes: Air Force, Part 43 - Legion Magazine

A Handley Page Hampden on a practice torpedo run off Vancouver Island, February 1943. PHOTO: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA144775 Military aircraft applications evolved quickly from 1910 onwards, including development of torpedo bombers as an anti-shipping weapon. Italy, Britain and Germany all...

legionmagazine.com

Dropping 'Fish': Air Force, Part 44 - Legion Magazine

A Bristol Beaufort, September 1941. PHOTO: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA160969 The Royal Canadian Air Force’s overseas experience with torpedo bombers differed greatly from the sporadic and often ineffective operations on the home front. Although the RCAF carried only one torpedo bomber...

legionmagazine.com

 

[wuzak]

Too bad for the RAF. Both Canada and Australia produced the Mosquito - so they'll take what they need from their domestic production. The first Canadian Mosquitos were completed in Sept 1941.

The first Australian Mosquito was produced in July 1943, totally 212 aircraft built at Bankstown. I see no reason the Australians can't follow the Canadian example and start earlier in time to replace their lost Beaufighters. Getting Packard engines may be logistically tricky, but any transports from the US West Coast bringing engines to Australia can sail freely until Dec 1941, and then stay well south afterward.

Not many Packard Merlins produced in 1941.

The first Mosquito prototype only flew in November 1940, British production was in its early stages in 1941. There is zero chance of getting a Mosquito built in Canada in 1941, let alone Australia.

 

[EwenS]

Not many Packard Merlins produced in 1941.

The first Mosquito prototype only flew in November 1940, British production was in its early stages in 1941. There is zero chance of getting a Mosquito built in Canada in 1941, let alone Australia.

Canadian interest in the Mosquito first arose in Dec 1940 when the Canadian Minister of Munitions and Supply, C D Howe, first saw it fly. It was July 1941 before talks on building them in Canada reached a conclusion. This coincided with a contract for Tiger Moths coming to an end so allowing future production plans to be altered. Drawings were sent beginning Oct. KB300, the first Canadian built Mossie, flew on 24 Sept 1942. By the end of the year 4 were flying. These were followed by 88 in 1943, 424 in 1944 and 518 in 1945 for total Canadian production of 1,034. In 1945 production moved from bombers to fighter bombers.

Packard only built 49 Merlin engines in 1941.

It was the end of 1941 before serious consideration could be given to Mosquito production in Australia. DH Hatfield were then so hard pressed that they referred the Australians to Canada. By March 1942 engine supply issues had been resolved and the RAAF ordered Mossie production in Australia. A sample aircraft (a Mk.II) was sent but it was Dec 1942 before it was assembled and flown. But many components still had to be supplied from Britain as setting up Australian sources was proving difficult. It was April 1943 before the new production space could begin to be occupied. By Oct production had started but there were shortages of components and labour. First delivery to RAAF was 4 March 1944. Many constructional problems had to be overcome before production could ramp up.

Australian monthly production numbers from March 1944 were: 2,1,2,1,0,1,2,6,5,7,9,10,11,6,12 total 75 by end of May 1945 rising to 108 on 15 Aug and an eventual 212. 6 of the earlier airframes became PR.40 conversions. The first squadron to equip with the Australian built FB.40 version was 94 from May 1945 but it ceased flying in Sept.

Numbers of Mosquitos were supplied to Australia from British production lines:-1.F.II; 14xT.III (from 10/43); 38xFB.VI (from 11/44); 23xPR.XVI (from 11/44)

 

[EwenS]

Re the Beaufighter, there were various proposals for uprated versions. A Mk.II was fitted with RR Griffon IIB engines and 4 bladed props in 1941. The Aussies trialled a Wright Cyclone GR-2600 conversion in 1943 as a hedge against a shortage of Hercules.

Then we have the Jan 1939 proposals for the Bristol Type 157 development as a 3 seat bomber which I think someone might have mentioned above. And then the Bristol Type 158 as an improved fighter with a slimmer fuselage with either Hercules (Beaufighter III) or Griffons (Beaufighter IV). Neither of the latter saw the light of day due the Battle of Britain and the pressure to get night fighters built.

 

[Admiral Beez]

I wonder if the sleeve valve chaps at Bristol can make an earlier go of helping Napier address the issues with the Sabre.