Supermarine fighters after the Spitfire?

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Admiral Beez said:
I just trying to follow your path. I suggested a piston-powered, prop-driven fighter. You proposed something that was neither.
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I did - because neither would work!!!! Remove the piston engine and prop, up the ante with a jet and it was still a dud.

Seaplane fighters were a waste no matter how you're going to try to configure for it, even if it was contained in a hull. Extra maintenance, extra training and a more hazardous operation. The old saying goes, "you can't polish a turd"
 
I mentioned one earlier - the Blackburn B.44
 
BAC, owners of the Vickers-Supermarine name could have made something Supermarine branded. Perhaps the BAC nee English Electric Lightning or the Concorde? Perhaps BAC (Vickers-Supermarine, English Electric and Bristol) and Hawker-Siddeley should have merged earlier. Then we could have one national fighter player, like France's Dassault or Sweden's SAAB, and avoided duplication of effort like the supersonic Supermarine 545 and Hawker P.1121.
 
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OK it is not a fighter.

But it was as good as you were going to get for a Piston powered flying boat as far as low drag goes.
You have the retracting hull bottom to keep the fuselage small. You have tip floats that retract up to form the wing tips for low drag.

Blackburn did not forget the concept and tried to draw up a fighter. as mentioned by others, The Blackburn B-44


You can find different drawings. They were planning to use a Sabre engine for power and use a counter rotating prop to keep the propeller small.

Unless you pivot the prop up like an Osprey you should be seeing the problem/s

A. You need a sizable float for flotation while in the water. The float makes for a larger than needed fuselage when retracted.
B. You need to keep the prop out of the water and/or the spray from the float/s.
C you need floats for lateral stability. In the drawing above the wing floats retract inboard to stow just outside the cannon bays.

There is just no way to reduce the fuselage/hull to the size of a land plane using the same engine/fuel load.
Although the Italians tried in the late 1920s.


idea was to use the water propeller and hydro foils to get the plane up to the height needed to engage the air propeller.
This plane needed even calmer waters than regular Schneider Trophy racers. The foils weren't quite right and caveated at just about the point the craft was up to the speed needed to engage the air prop and with the caveating foils losing lift the plane settled down closer to the water.

They got rid of the floats/hull bottom but the technology of the day wasn't up to the challenge. And the idea of trying use such a machine in rougher water and/or with less than extraordinary maintenance (air intakes switched over depending on which propeller was in use for instance.

The advantage of a jet fighter was that you only had to worry about a big enough fuselage to provide flotation in the water, you didn't have to worry about keeping the propeller/s clear of the water/spray.
 
An inventive model maker has come up with a solution



Now in a real airplane you just have to come up with a hinged drive line that can handle well over 1000hp.

Might help it the pilot could actually see where he was going (like when landing).

Hmmmmm. Take a P-39, make the nose a bit longer, hinge the prop shaft just forward of the cockpit. Give it a bubble canopy so you can get rid of the doors. Move the wing up to mid fuselage or just under the Cockpit opening.

We might be onto something!!!!!!!!!!!

Hitting a foreign object in the water at around 100mph is still going to suck.
 
I can imagine that soon there will be a resurgence of waterborne aircraft as people take up more and more land causing restrictions on current and new airports. Remember there is more water on earth than land.
 
It's worth noting that whilst float/seaplane fighters were appearing anachronistic in WW2, the seaplane/flying boat was the only real means of travelling the globe other than in ships, so the use of military aircraft equipped with floats was a very common thing in that time period and it was only really after WW2 that the idea of relying on water aircraft began dying off, except in Britain, where old habits died a lot more slowly than other nations, it appears.

In the 20s and 30s the long range flying boat, apart from airships, which only the Germans managed to get working as a scheduled passenger venture, was the only means of getting around the vast stretches of water like across the Atlantic and Pacific on a regular basis, aside from long distance record breaking flights, that is and it was only into the very late 1930s that landplane airliners could cross the Atlantic non-stop for the first time. The idea of sea-based fighters goes back to the Great War of course, the Sopwith Schneider might have been the prototype floatplane fighter, which was essentially a military version of the Tabloid that won the Schneider Trophy in 1914, although it wasn't designed with the aim of destroying other aeroplanes, it's arming with a single Lewis gun made it capable of doing so if the need arose. This in turn was developed into the Sopwith/Blackburn/Fairey Hamble Baby, which was widespread in the RNAS. Supermarine produced a flying boat fighter similarly named, which was modified to become the Sealion that eventually won the Schneider Trophy in 1922. Britain wasn't the only country that toyed with the idea. The Germans fitted floats to Albatros fighters and seaplanes and flying boats were de rigeur in the Adriatic.

The concept before and entering into WW2 was not as obscure as we might think today either. Let's put it this way, while the USA employed vast resources in WW2 to to jump from island to island in the Pacific, it certainly didn't have that capability before the war. WW2 enabled that to happen and again, while plans like Orange and what-have-you might have stated that that might be what the US would do, it certainly didn't have the capability to do so before the war on the scale that it did during the war. WW2 enabled the grand ideas of commanders with vision and the US happened to have a vast untapped resource in terms of manpower, production capability and crazy/advanced thinking, but before the war, the USA was doing the same as everyone else.

In the 1920s the US Navy was issuing specifications for floatplane fighters, the Vought FU single-seat biplane fighter was operated aboard US battleships and in 1927 the navy issued a specification for its replacement. Curtiss had experience with high speed seaplanes, the energy devoted to the Schneider Trophy affected the US, too and the Curtiss R3C won the 1925 Schneider Trophy piloted by Doolittle (That guy!) and Curtiss had built F6C biplane fighters on floats. The Curtiss Seahawk floatplane fighter was designed to replace the Vought FU-1.

As for the F4F-3S, fitted with floats as seen above, this wasn't intended as just a one-off experiment. The US Navy ordered the type from Grumman in October 1942 following encounters with Japanese floatplane fighters in the Pacific. 100 F4F-7s were allocated for conversion on the production line but these eventually rolled out of the factory as training aircraft without floats, as by mid late 1943 the US Navy had more carriers and the island-hopping was in full swing. It's a little known fact that the navy specified that Grumman investigate the F6F-3 as a floatplane fighter in late 1942 to the same requirement, but only wind tunnel models were made before the idea was dropped.

Info from Francillon's Grumman Aircraft since 1929 and Bowers' Curtiss aircraft 1907-1947, among other things...
 
It's interesting to note that Supermarine investigated the float equipped Spitfire for operations from Norwegian fiords in 1940, and the later Mk.V and IX conversions were designed for the Mediterranean/Agean Sea, where the Brits had much experience operating during the Great War.
 
Great post - I do think into the late 20s and 30s, float planes and flying boats were looked at as a viable option because airport construction was also maturing. Range (or lack there of) on airliners also played into this. LaGuardia Airport in NYC originally had a provisions to support seaplanes/ flying boats during this period.

As mentioned, the progress of the war and the real impracticality of the floatplane fighter caught up with the concept. I also think the floatplane F4Fs were just a kneejerk reaction to the floatplane Zero. IMO those 100 F4F-7s were better served as landplane trainers.

Putting floats on fighters IMO were like putting a ball and chain on a boxer.
 
FLYBOYJ said:
Putting floats on fighters IMO were like putting a ball and chain on a boxer.
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Completely! We often forget just how powerful the pull of the sea was as a medium for aviation, especially after the massive input by the Seabees in the Pacific. It's interesting to note that the US military played a big part in establishing aviation across the Pacific island communities. New Zealand was used as a US base for training and for jumping into operations into lesser known corners of the Pacific. The supply of equipment the Americans brought with them was enormous and definitely helped the construction and infrastructure industries in small nations in the region.

I did a bit of reading into the establishment of military bases in New Zealand and it is interesting to note that much of the WW2 infrastructure projects that were assumed to have been done by the Americans were actually done by the New Zealand Ministry of Works, but not without US cooperation. This included the construction of Pacific Island airfields. Americans offered advice and equipment, but much of the work done in NZ protectorate nations like Samoa (the non-US bit), Tonga and the Cook Islands was done by the NZ MoW. Like everywhere in WW2, air force bases sprang up around NZ and the Americans often found themselves at remote corners of the country, but it's interesting to note that the bases were built by the NZ MoW, but there were US service personnel sent to these places for one reason or another.

These pictures were taken in the Cook Islands atoll of Aitutaki. The first picture is of the Tasman Empire Airways (TEAL) flying boat jetty, from where boats would carry passengers to the aircraft moored out in the lagoon. The site is on a tiny island away from Aitutaki's main island and was the only international airport for the Cook Islands until some time after WW2 when the airstrip on Rarotonga, the main island in the Cooks archipelago was developed by Air New Zealand. Aitutaki had a coral runway built by NZ MoW with US participation, of course during WW2, the first aircraft in there were RNZAF transport aircraft, but at the same time the first runway was built on Raro. Aitutaki now has a concrete runway and the coral strip built in the war is abandoned (My family has ties to the islands, although I'm the only member of my family that's never lived there!)

Akaiami flying boat jetty Aitutaki atoll 001

The jetty at Akaiami where the boats would take people out to the awaiting flying boats. A kayak stands in for the flying boat... You can see the change in the water colour where the seabed was dredged to enable flying boat operations.

Aitutaki's first landplane runway built on Aitutaki island proper. Built by NZ MoW but with US assistance during WW2.

Aitutaki coral runway 007

By the way, coral dust EATS aluminium! The engineers servicing aircraft on the coral runways during the Pacific campaigns would have been working overtime to keep aircraft and engines serviceable! I worked in a propshop and we used to service the Air Raro aircraft propellers. Every inspection required new blades. Coral dust creates little craters in the metal like the surface of the moon... That stuff is nasty!
 
tomo pauk said:
Hawker certainly had the production capacity to jump on the P-51 bandwagon. Unfortunately, they were making Hurricanes well into 1944.
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The Hurricane was a good enough fighter bomber in the Far East right up to VJ Day. It was tough, easy to fly, easy to maintain, cheap to build.
Compare the attrition rate of P-51's operating in the same awful conditions.

As for Hawker, their eye was always on the prize and their Tempest was a fabulous fighter, ferociously fast, fast climbing, extremely agile, heavily armed - good enough to be the only piston fighter the Luftwaffe explicitly warned Me 262 pilots to be wary of.
 
The Tempest was ferocious, there is no question, but not so much that it was singled out to Me262 pilots.

The Allied fighter that accounted for nearly three quarters of all Me262 losses, was the Mustang.

And most of the Me262 losses by Allied fighters, occurred during landing or take-off.
 

"the Messerschmitt Me 262's most dangerous opponent was the British Hawker Tempest—extremely fast at low altitudes, highly manoeuvrable and heavily armed."
Hubert Lange
 
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