Was the Seafire’s narrow track the issue?

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The British would have been better designing a single seat carrier fighter from scratch, addressing all the aerodynamic issues as well as endurance etc. Failing that they should have adopted US carrier aircraft, which they did to a certain extent.

The Seafire was always going to be something of a bodge job and would always suffer from the problems inherited in adapting an aircraft designed for an entirely different role to carrier operations.

Let's be honest, the Seafire 47 has got precious little in common with any of the Merlin Seafires, or even a Seafire 45. We can talk about increasing flap area, fitting spoilers or other lift destroying devices, fiddling with the undercarriage, etc. but these are all more bodges which do not address the fundamental problems.
 
Admiral Beez said:
Eventually Britain got it right and presented the world's best prop/piston carrier fighter of all time, the Sea Fury. Just as the world was going to jets....
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We cross posted, but yes, though I would say one of the two best with the F8F. My father flew the Sea Fury for several years and loved it. He also flew the F8F in the US and had a high opinion of that too.
He didn't fancy jets and lost a lot of friends to the early versions. He converted to what was then the new area of helicopter aviation in the mid '50s. He managed to dump one in the sea off Malta but being a helicopter everyone survived!
 
Hawker, like some other companies, was evolving. Some companies were stagnating, other were out-pacing others with jets, some even had swept wings.
Hawker Fury (monoplane, the last of the 3 above) was from 1945?
 
fastmongrel said:
What happened in the Hawker design office in the 1930s they managed to go from this in 1931

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To this in 1940
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To this in 1943
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Well Hawkers were one of the few UK players in the game. Gloster were also owned by Hawker group and Hawker Siddley Armstrong Whitworth were too. The Typhoon Tornado were behind the curve at almost all times during the war, this was partly due to the engines, but the Typhoon also needed a new fuselage wings and canopy to become the Tempest. I don't think anyone would say the Gloster Meteor was a great design, its just that Gloster as part of Hawkers were chosen, in my view not a patch on the de Havilland designs.
 
fastmongrel said:
What happened in the Hawker design office in the 1930s they managed to go from this in 1931

View attachment 602247

To this in 1940
View attachment 602248

To this in 1943
View attachment 602249
Click to expand...
Sir Sidney Camm got older, busier and likely began to delegate design to his underlings. Smith and Petter's work on the Spitfire aside, look at how Supermarine went to hell after Mitchell died. Had he lived, Mitchell would have made the Attacker, Swift and Scimitar something superlative.
 
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fastmongrel said:
What happened in the Hawker design office in the 1930s they managed to go from this in 1931

View attachment 602247

To this in 1940
View attachment 602248

To this in 1943
View attachment 602249
Click to expand...
Since the Hurricane was named the Fury Monoplane in its early days, shouldn't the Tornado be named the Gladiator monoplane? If you judge advanced design purely by looks then Westland were way ahead of Hawkers. The Whirlwind which flew before the war started has leading edge radiator inlets, a bubble canopy and overall clean streamlined design that Hawkers didn't produce until the last year of the war. In terms of the OP Westland built most of the Seafires made along with many Spitfires and were one of the few who built carrier based aircraft after the war ended. 1946 Wyvern from Wiki.
 
Hi to all.

There's additional points that also need to be taken into account concerning the Seafire. If they have already been mentioned, I apologise.

First, a high number of prangs observed in photographs, are noted as being taken on escort carriers. So, we have a type of vessel operating Seafires, where there's a very small margin of horsepower available to an aircraft, between the vessels maximum speed and that of a successful landing without damaging the kite. Furthermore, there's at least one day that I am aware of, where the Commanding Officer of the main carrier task force, had the fleet carrier he was on at that time, reduce speed to that of an escort carrier. He wanted to observe what would occur to the Seafires on landing! A batsman also lost at least one Seafire, due to waving off the aircraft too late during the committed landing phase. How many others were lost in that fashion I don't know. Then, there's the lack of experience of a considerable number of pilots operating the aircraft. Combine some of the above aspects together, particularly in an operational area, and the outcome will speak for itself.
 
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