Twin engine Tornado

wuzak · Dec 4, 2024

With the issues facing the Vulture, and its production shut down, the Hawker Tornado was cancelled.

The prototypes continued to be used - in developing the Centaurus and its installation, and contra-rotating props, for example.

But could Hawker have done what Avro did for the Manchester - replace one Vulture with two Merlins?

The Merlins could be placed where the wing changes to dihedral, roughly where the main landing gear sits.

The wing itself is big and strong, so may not need much strengthening to fit two Merlin XX power eggs, like that used on the Beafighter. Make a new gun nose to replace the engine.

Could it have worked?

Still a low altitude performer?

tomo pauk · Dec 4, 2024

wuzak said:
But could Hawker have done what Avro did for the Manchester - replace one Vulture with two Merlins?
The Merlins could be placed where the wing changes to dihedral, roughly where the main landing gear sits.
The wing itself is big and strong, so may not need much strengthening to fit two Merlin XX power eggs, like that used on the Beafighter. Make a new gun nose to replace the engine.

That can be easily enough done in the pixels, but it will take a lot of effort to bring the design to a fruition
Provided that the design is greenlit when in conceptual stage, we'd probably saw a bit bigger wing? Say, a new wing section whose job is to support the engine in it's nacelle, as well as the main U/C. Benefit of the U/C retracting in the nacelle is that now a lot of volume is freed for the fuel tanks. No guns & ammo in the wings again allows for a good fuel tankage there. There will be no fuselage tanks in this iteration. A tail extension and/or tail ballasts will need to counterweight the weight of two powerplants and guns that are now further ahead of the CoC than it was the case with Typhoon.

Provided that all is okay and the A/C will not disintegrate in mid air during the combat, we'd probably be having a ~300 sq ft wing? Even the Merlin 45s will so here.

wuzak said:
Could it have worked?

It's anyone's guess.
My guess is that it will need a lot of work to be done, much more than when the Typhoon was morphing into the Tempest.

wuzak said:
Still a low altitude performer?

Probably better than the Typhoon at all the greater altitudes.

yulzari · Dec 4, 2024

Is it not already done, called the Whirlwind?…………..

wuzak · Dec 4, 2024

yulzari said:
Is it not already done, called the Whirlwind?…………..

Whirlwind was smaller and lighter, plus a dead end because of the engine choice - like the Tornado.

Zmauky · Dec 4, 2024

Tornado - Typhoon engine change
Typhoon - Tempest wing change
Tempest - Fury (Sea) cleaning design
Long road but dead end ?

GrauGeist · Dec 4, 2024

wuzak said:
With the issues facing the Vulture, and its production shut down, the Hawker Tornado was cancelled.

The prototypes continued to be used - in developing the Centaurus and its installation, and contra-rotating props, for example.

But could Hawker have done what Avro did for the Manchester - replace one Vulture with two Merlins?

The Merlins could be placed where the wing changes to dihedral, roughly where the main landing gear sits.

The wing itself is big and strong, so may not need much strengthening to fit two Merlin XX power eggs, like that used on the Beafighter. Make a new gun nose to replace the engine.

Could it have worked?

Still a low altitude performer?

Perhaps a modified fighter version of Hawker's P.1005 project would work?

buffnut453 · Dec 4, 2024

When I saw the thread title, I immediately thought of this:

Coat donned, door open...but it's cold outside!

wuzak · Dec 4, 2024

Zmauky said:
Tornado - Typhoon engine change
Typhoon - Tempest wing change
Tempest - Fury (Sea) cleaning design
Long road but dead end ?

Typhoon and Tornado were parallel programs.

That is, the Typhoon was not a Tornado with an engine change - it was designed for the Sabre from the beginning, the Tornado with the Vulture.

So the history would be:
Typhoon + laminar flow wing -> Tempest
Tempest with design clean-up -> Fury/Sea Fury

Parallel to that
Tornado -> ?

EwenS · Dec 5, 2024

Or

Tornado (Vulture) to Tornado (Centaurus 1942) fed in to Tempest II

Typhoon (Sabre)
Typhoon + laminar wing = Tempest I/V/VI (Sabre)
or with different engines III/IV (Griffon IIB/61 intended) and Tempest II (Centaurus from Tornado programme)

The Fury / Sea Fury was a lot more than a "cleaning up" of the Tempest. It started as a "Light Tempest Fighter" but the alterations became much more extensive. Lighter airframe (before addition of carrier equipment), shortened wingspan (by 3ft) and other wing changes, raised cockpit line, fully monocoque fuselage (in Tornado, Typhoon & Tempest only the fuselage aft of the cockpit was monocoque, the remainder being a tubular structure like the Hurricane forward fuselage). Engine choices Griffon 85 or Centaurus

Howard Gibson · Dec 5, 2024

wuzak said:
With the issues facing the Vulture, and its production shut down, the Hawker Tornado was cancelled.

The prototypes continued to be used - in developing the Centaurus and its installation, and contra-rotating props, for example.

But could Hawker have done what Avro did for the Manchester - replace one Vulture with two Merlins?

The Merlins could be placed where the wing changes to dihedral, roughly where the main landing gear sits.

The wing itself is big and strong, so may not need much strengthening to fit two Merlin XX power eggs, like that used on the Beafighter. Make a new gun nose to replace the engine.

Could it have worked?

Still a low altitude performer?

This is complete redesign of the aircraft. You are not just removing the engine from the nose. You need a new fuselage, with the cockpit moved further forwards, and you need to stress the wings for the engine mounts. The engine mounts take away some wing area, so perhaps you need a greater wingspan. You wind up with something that looks like a de Havilland Hornet, which is great, but somebody already was working on that.

Armament in the nose is nice, but you really want the ammunition to be mounted close to the aircraft's centre of mass.

You have a decent airframe. Double down on the Napier Sabre, and work on the Centaurus.

Shortround6 · Dec 5, 2024

It would have been a lot less work to fix the Whirlwind than to try to put two Merlins on a Tornado.

Saving the nameplate is not a good way to use either the publics money or the shareholders money.

Canaus · Dec 9, 2024

"Easy" to do a twin engined Tornado just requiring time, effort, resources and the will of the Air Ministry.
But as already stated, the devil is in the details. This would require a whole new aircraft design & production with the accompanying timeline of organising production facilities.
In hindsight the single engined ground attack aircraft worked out well being cheaper & faster to produce than a twin.
Already in production was the Mossie with the Hornet on the drawing board.
The need for a long range twin for the coming invasion of Japan could be seen as needed.
But the over riding issue, I believe, is that British resources were stretched at that point in the war.
As an example Nazi Germany expended huge resources on multiple projects where the time line in getting these projects into service came just too late to be of any practical military use. The main beneficiaries of all the German research was Russia & US.

GrauGeist · Dec 9, 2024

I mentioned this earlier, but it must have been missed.

Could Hawker have modified the existing P.1005 project into a twin fighter instead of a high-speed bomber?

wuzak · Dec 10, 2024

GrauGeist said:
I mentioned this earlier, but it must have been missed.

Could Hawker have modified the existing P.1005 project into a twin fighter instead of a high-speed bomber?

There was to be a fighter version of the P.1005.

But that required twin sabres, so probably a non-starter.

GrauGeist · Dec 10, 2024

wuzak said:
There was to be a fighter version of the P.1005.

But that required twin sabres, so probably a non-starter.

Right, but the concept/airframe was there, so what if the realization of the Merlin being available beforehand was taken into account?

wuzak · Dec 10, 2024

GrauGeist said:
Right, but the concept/airframe was there, so what if the realization of the Merlin being available beforehand was taken into account?

I think the P.1005 would need the extra power of the Sabres.

Maybe it could have worked with a pair of Griffons.

Twin engine Tornado

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