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- #21
Admiral Beez
Captain
That wasn't the spec. It can be far worse than the Skua if need be, as long as it meets the spec, including the torpedo.
FAA variant of Vickers Wellesley
- Thread starter Admiral Beez
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Good God man, why?! The FAA was in a precarious position, why would you want something worse?!
At a meting in 1937 between representatives of the Admiralty and the Air Ministry, the Skua was considered obsolescent and the latter had reservations about its forthcoming entry into service, but things were in motion and Blackburn was in full swing delivering the FAA's most modern, yet within a year or two an almost wholly inadequate aircraft to frontline squadrons. The Wellesley would have been a terrible failure on a carrier deck. Perhaps even the biplane entry to specification G.4/31, the Vickers design that was the first to incorporate Wallis' geodetic structure in the fuselage only would have been a better option than converting the Wellesley, which was a private venture to the specification.
I would have chosen the Hawker entry though, as it was faster and was based on the very successful Hart light bomber, although bigger. G.4/31 went unfulfilled and the Wellesley was put into production under a separate requirement instead because it was a monoplane that had better performance than the other entries to the spec.
That doesn't make it ideal for a carrier though. Torpedo biplanes as originally intended were designed to be slow and manoeuvrable to enable them to evade attack from enemy aircraft at low speed close to the water's edge. The earliest carrier based torpedoplanes had no armament at all - the Cuckoo and Blackburn Dart, for example, but later aircraft had rear mounted machine guns because of attack from above, but were still expected to be able to manoeuvre low and slow. I doubt sincerely that the Wellesley was capable of manoeuvring low and slow. Torpedo trials with the type took place because of the expectation that G.4/31 should be able to carry a torpedo, but the type never was adopted for that use in service.
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- #23
Admiral Beez
Captain
To see what the boffins in British aeronautical improvisation and origami are capable of.
We need to add power, manage weight and improve lift. So, fast-track Hercules adoption, ditch the underwing bomb panniers, redesign the wing with shorter span, large area and good flaps, change the canopy, ditch the third crewman and the level bomb aimer position, and move to external torpedo and bombs. Perhaps we'll end up with something like this.
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From a carrier? Look at the size of it! You could fly a Sopwith Pup from one of its wings! That span is gonna cause real issues operationally on deck.
The Air Ministry feared that modern aircraft were getting too big for carriers so they came up with multiple roles for single aircraft in the '30s, which resulted in poor machines like the Skua. Please credit these guys with some forethought, even if in reality they didn't demonstrate a huge amount by not updating the FAA's single-seat fighters. If the Wellesley gets turned into a carrier based machine, there's even more space gone for less capability. Also, how effective is this actually gonna be? Better than a Swordfish or Albacore? I don't think so.
Sure, do something useful with it to stretch its capability but be sensible as to how; make it a dedicated recon machine or such like.
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Shortround6
Major General
1. Take the Wellesley with Pegasus engine, remove airframe.
2. Take a Skua airframe, sans engine
3. Put the Pegasus engine into the Skau airframe. Increase gross weight/bombload.
4. FAA has the function equivalent of a Douglas SBD 1-3 except it has folding wings!
5. Park the engineless Wellesley's around various aerodromes to act as decoys.
2. Take a Skua airframe, sans engine
3. Put the Pegasus engine into the Skau airframe. Increase gross weight/bombload.
4. FAA has the function equivalent of a Douglas SBD 1-3 except it has folding wings!
5. Park the engineless Wellesley's around various aerodromes to act as decoys.
Instead of a carrier-capable Wellesley, it might have been easier to design a Wellesley-capable carrier. Who would they get to design and build it? Thomas Andrews went down with his last creation, the Titanic, but John Brown & Co., fresh from finishing the Queen Mary, may have been available.
- Thread starter
- #27
Admiral Beez
Captain
Ha. Though a carrier designed around the Wellesley would be larger enough for the Mosquito.
There's always the Wellesley's in-house competitor in the Vickers Type 253.
- Thread starter
- #28
Admiral Beez
Captain
Someone liked the design enough to take it to extremes… in toy scale.
www.airplanesandrockets.com
Stunting Vickers Wellesley, May 1957 American Modeler
An electric power setup could easily be adapted to the airframe
FLYBOYJ
"THE GREAT GAZOO"
After reading all of this I'm convinced the best use of an FAA variant of Vickers Wellesley would be to push it in the ocean!
SaparotRob
Unter Gemeine Geschwader Murmeltier XIII
I'm liking airfield decoys.
FLYBOYJ
"THE GREAT GAZOO"
SaparotRob
Unter Gemeine Geschwader Murmeltier XIII
At least the Bredas look nice.
buffnut453
Captain
SaparotRob
Unter Gemeine Geschwader Murmeltier XIII
And change direction.
keithwwalker
Airman
- 38
- Jan 27, 2014
If the Wellesley be modified for carrier duty, it would have shorter span WIDER CHORD wings to maintain as much wing area as possible. It would end up with a wing area between an Avenger & a Grumman AF Guardian, & have a Hercules or preferably Centaurus engine. Of course Avengers were in good supply for FAA
buffnut453
Captain
The epitome of "all show, no go"!
Shortround6
Major General
So we unscrew the name plate, jack up the oil tank cap and slide a new plane ( wing, engine, landing and fuselage) underneath and go from there?
That would have worked; a shorter/wider wing would detract from the range (which was probably excessive for a carrier plane, anyway) and that, with the bigger engine, would improve the speed somewhat, which would be a good thing - but the actual improvement would be pure speculation. Painting roundels on Avengers gave them a known good airplane at the cost of a little paint.
SaparotRob
Unter Gemeine Geschwader Murmeltier XIII
In the time frame speculated, is the TBF available? Maybe the FAA could pick up some TBDs cheap. In the middle of the Med, they might be effective.
Yup, mentioned it earlier, but the biplane was Vickers' submission to the specification G.4/31, whereas the Wellesley prototype was a private venture project in response to the spec that the Air Ministry happened to like more than the official submissions.
Nonetheless, I'm kinda with everyone else here in that Wellesleys shouldn't be seen anywhere near a carrier deck. It's worth pointing out that the Wellesley's wingspan is two feet shorter than the length of the RA-5 Vigilante's fuselage, which might have been okay on a Forrestal Class carrier but not on a pre-war British carrier...
If you are gonna reduce the Wellesley's span, then you're making changes to the basic design that requires rework from the design office and on the production line, which takes time and means the Wellesley is even more obsolete by the time it enters service...
