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Now that you mentioned it - yes, looks kinda He 100 that gained a few poundsThe Heston Racer is one of those great what-ifs. To me it's similar to the HE-100.
I'm not sure Heston had the engineering capacity to design such a fighter. My understanding is that Napier led the design and Heston was involved to help realize the project. Heston was also involved in other war critical projects including leading the development of the PR Spitfires.
Basically you want a Hawker Tempest early.The small, sleek and powerful Napier-Heston racer was supposed to beat the German record aircraft by early 1940s. Unfortunately, that didn't happened.
For the needs of this thread, let's have people at Heston design a sleek, powerful, if not very small fighter with the Sabre instead of the racer. Talk 250-270 sq ft (not 160 sq ft as on the racer) wing of thin profile , 'blended' ram air intakes, smart cooling system etc. 4 cannons as weaponry, radios, some protection for pilot and fuel tanks etc. 130-140 imp gals of internal fuel for starters. 'Normal' cockpit canopy. Use of wood panels is okay, but all-light-alloy construction is also okay, and probably better. Yes, someone else will need to make them, since Heston company has no production facilities worth speaking about.
See here:Basically you want a Hawker Tempest early.
Take out the engine and tail wheel, change everything else, put the engine back in and bolt the tailwheel back on.
It would also help to somebody fix the supercharger on the Sabre.
Speed record planes make lousy fighters because after you fix everything you need to fix to turn them into fighters they are surprisingly, not any faster than a plane using the same engine that was designed to be a fighter.
In other words, the racer never happens.if not very small fighter with the Sabre instead of the racer.
Heston's most up to date, advanced aircraft before the Racer.
4-5 seat cabin monoplane with retracting landing gear and a wooden wing.
DH Gypsy-Six engine with or without controllable pitch prop.
Heston started work in 1938 and the ill fated first flight was June 12th 1940 which is too early to incorporate any 'laminar flow' air foils.
That is quite true but as I pointed out earlier, there were at least 3 differenced between the Typhoon and the Tempest wing. Thinner may have been the most important one, I don't know, but it was not only one. The P-40 used a 15% wing and it had trouble with compressibility. Mainly avoided by the P-40 because most P-40s couldn't fly high enough to get into trouble with compressibility.Not that I'm championing any of the laminar flow wings here - there is a whole rainbow of wing profiles going from the 19% thick wing on the Typhoon down to the thin wings of ~14% that were present on many fighter designs in second half of 1930s.
That is quite true but as I pointed out earlier, there were at least 3 differenced between the Typhoon and the Tempest wing. Thinner may have been the most important one, I don't know, but it was not only one.
The P-40 used a 15% wing and it had trouble with compressibility. Mainly avoided by the P-40 because most P-40s couldn't fly high enough to get into trouble with compressibility.
I mentioned the different profile earlier. I did not mention (my fault) the greater wing area and the change in planform which went from straight taper both front and rear to elliptical. So that makes five changes, if we want more we can look at flap area and aileron placement (better roll response?)Other two differences being that actual profile was more modern (we can call it laminar for all I care), while the wing area was greater (pays off at greater altitudes, and compensates for the likely loss of lift coefficient wrt. payload it will be able to carry without making much of a problem).
Good points.I mentioned the different profile earlier. I did not mention (my fault) the greater wing area and the change in planform which went from straight taper both front and rear to elliptical. So that makes five changes, if we want more we can look at flap area and aileron placement (better roll response?)
The broader cord is where the added wing area came from. This helped allow for the 20mm cannon to be moved back as did moving the max thickness further back on on wing.
Also means that the wing wasn't quite as thin as % number indicates and while that isn't of much concern with the aerodynamics it does make 'packaging' a bit easier. fitting the 20mm guns in without having so much barrel sticking out and not changing the wing fuel tanks (or not much). Many articles of the time called the airfoil Laminar flow and while it technically may not have been trying to correct the usage/terminally of the time a this late date may cause more confusion than clarity. I just accept that it was a terminology of the time and most everybody back then understood what they were talking about even if it actually didn't work quite they way they thought. The wings with the max thickness moved back from the traditional 30% point had lower drag in general even if they weren't laminar flow in practice.
I have no intention to slap rails for rockets on it, like it was done wit Typhoon, and it might (and might not) be too tight for ~190 imp gals internal fuel load, as it was the case for Tempest from late 1944 on.So what gets left out of the early/small wing Tempest?
Hopefully the new fighter does not have the problem of tail separation mid-air under high G load, like it was the case with Typhoons.Of the first 142 delivered, only seven were not involved in serious non-combat accidents due to engine or airframe failures at one time or another.
I don't know if that is true or not and even if we take out most of the airframe failures (elevator flutter problems) The Sabre engine was far from a reliable powerplant in 1941/42.
What's surprising is how small the Napier-Heston Racer actually was and how limiting that would be for the basis of a fighter, especially with the Saber engine.
The problem is that Heston has no real basis for fighter. How much of the racer was Heston and how much was Napier using Heston as an assembly shop I don't know.This is why I haven't suggested that racer is a basis for a fighter, but that racer never sees the light of the day, and Heston makes a fighter instead of it.
The British did a lot of sub-contacting back and forth there were a number of shadow plants that were opened that get skipped over in a lot histories (especially non-British ones).From what I've been able to find, the Napier-Heston racer was really designed by Napier. That said, Heston did make a real contribution to the war effort through the development of the photo-recon spitfire. Heston was really responsible for the advancement and conversion of the Spitfire to a long range reconnaissance platform until demand moved it back to Supermarine for larger scale production.
As for the source for another fighter, my money would be on Gloster. They seem very North American like in that they have experience with higher performance aircraft and capable of coming up with a plane that pushes the design envelope a bit.