Westland Whirlwind alternative engines?

Their "fighter" missions, from Aug/Sept of 1941 (first raid was to Cherbourg peninsula on June 14th, required staging through Ibsley, but next raid was in Aug. ) sometimes (most often?) included strafing Luftwaffe forward airfields and shooting up what they could find when poor navigation or weather prevented attacking assigned targets. Shot up radio huts or a few planes (in some cases a single plane under repair) don't really make a significant difference but they were attacking ground targets for around a year before the bombs showed up. You are quite right in that often such attacks were conducted by a flight of 4 aircraft. However there were times when 2 or 3 raids were conducted per day. A fair number of Whirlwinds were destroyed or damaged by flak well before the bomb racks showed up.
No 137 squadrons first operations were ground attack missions and not patrols over the English Channel although that became their mission after being moved to No 12 group.

I will fully grant that with an ammunition load of 240 20mm shells and no bombs these raids were not all that effective compared to what later aircraft could do but the Whirlwinds were flying them and some note should be made of them. The attacks on the distilleries seem to have been a pretty poorly thought out plan. 4 distilleries were the targets (could only be attacked during the harvest season) and only one or two Whirlwinds were assigned to each distillery. Cover for the withdrawal one one occasion, was provided by Spitfires from 3 squadrons. I have no idea if these were full squadrons or part squadrons. This "campaign" required Whirlwinds of 263 squadron to operate from Warmwell. I have no idea if these penny packet (or half penny) raids were a result of low reddiness in the home squadron or the lack of suitable hosting facilities at the temporary base/s. Obviously somebody higher than squadron commanders were planning/coordinating these attacks, which in the end failed to accomplish anything near the goal. Not really a big surprise.

I would agree with all of that. I think the fact that they were effectively the most heavily armed fighter with really good performance at lower altitudes led inevitably to them being used in the ground attack role, the timing, through 1941/42 is also relevant.

It is also worth remembering that the RAF didn't really 'do' fighter bombers, the first fighter bomber attack in Europe being carried out by Hurricanes of 607 Squadron in October 1941.

Cheers

Steve

As to aircraft safety, a good friend of mine's father Flew Corsairs with VMF-214 late in the war, after it had been reformed. He didn't speak much of what he saw in action but did relate several stories from training. He also once said that he was one of two men from his original group of pilots to survive the war.
He did survive a take-off accident that saw both wings ripped of his Corsair, the fuselage flip over with enough force to rip the engine and tail free and him suspended in the harness upside down. He used this story to illustrate the results of though training/indoctrination in an emergency as he reached out, turned off the fuel selector then released his harness whereupon he fell on his head.
It was a night take-off and the accident caused by some other personnel who had come back from town drunk and thought it would be funny to turn on a bank of floodlights partway along the runway. He lost his night vision and veried off the runway hitting a telephone pole, a parked bulldozer and finally a stack of cement pipes.
He also returned from town after a pass to find everyone thought him dead. Another pilot had borrowed his flight jacket with name stenciled across the back and crashed. Tentative identification had been made by the name on the flight jacket.
Both incidents were stateside before deploying over seas.