Westland Whirlwind revisited

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Conversely, in the world of historical academia, there will be scrutiny.
To be constantly on the defensive (to the point of exhaustively using the phrase "contrarian") is a shame, because there will always be an alternate viewpoint or facts that provide a different scenario.

This forum, of all the WWII sites out there, has a well versed member base that engages beyond strict "this is what happened, accept it or leave" lines.

But it's unreasonable to assume that everyone is going to agree with everything you post and interestingly enough, no one has labeled you for disagreeing with them.

Think about that...
 

Anyone in particular you have in mind?
 
GrauGeist said:
Conversely, in the world of historical academia, there will be scrutiny.
Click to expand...
Absolutely, I agree, no one wants bobble head affirmation of any post. That's not a discussion forum at all. But if you look at most discussion boards you find them, those that just search for ideas to discredit. Read my posts in the what'if forum, and you'll almost never see me taking an absolute position against anyone's post (that's the contrarian) Instead I first write how something may not be feasible, but then I try to find reasonable workarounds to achieve the original poster's premise. IMO, that's what a true, person to person discussion is about.

If you and I were sitting across from each other and you suggested that Bristol radials on the Whirlwind were both possible and a good idea, and I thought they were not, I'm going to say why, and then I'd suggest we break out the source materials and figure out how we could make it happen. What pieces on the chessboard we must move, the opportunity cost of radial Whirlwinds, what unintended consequences may occur due to attention, money, time and resources being redirected, etc. and of course we'd want to discuss the potential performance (speed, rate of climb, endurance, etc) of the radial Whirlwind. This is good discussion IMO, as opposed to those that just go for the default reject button. Just my two cents.
 
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yulzari said:
and if you use it at low level then a pair of Mercuries or Perseus would be within weight/power of the Peregrine and free up the wing radiator space for further extra fuel with no performance loss.
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I like the idea of the Perseus.

Rolls-Royce Peregrine - Wikipedia
Bristol Perseus - Wikipedia
The 56" wide Perseus will be draggy of course, but offers more power than the Peregrine, and allows for the leading edge radiators (see below) to be removed, adding space for fuel.



But for this to be worthwhile it must come before the Beaufighter, etc. So, Westland needs to think the Peregrine is a non-starter and that the Merlin isn't available. Petter needs to start with a radial in mind, so that the Whirlwind enters service in time to be useful.
 
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Peregrine was making 885 HP at 15500 ft an on +6.75 psi, where Perseus was good for 700 HP? On +9 psi boost and at ~10000 ft, Peregrine was good for 1000+ HP.

British engineers were not stupid, there was a lot of reasons why Perseus was not installed on a proper fighter.
 
Greetings Shortround6,

Thank you for your thoughts. I had missed the intent of the three word sets. I completely agree with your point. To my mind, the Welkin is based on the same concept of what characteristics Westland believes would make a good twin engine fighter. It's the same planform but not the same plane.
 
Greetings Schweiz,

I agree, the Welkin is a much greater departure in design that what has been discussed. That said, I do think that replacing the Peregrine with a Merlin (or Allison for that matter) would mandate a major redesign of the Whirlwind. That to me is where the Welkin provides some insight. At the very least the fuselage would need to get longer to achieve balance and you would require a new wing to carry the greater weight and fuel. At that point it begins to look more Welkin like.

A low altitude Whirlwind with a Merlin/Allison power plant would add at least 5' in length (based on the Hornet) and a broader wing for load carrying and fuel volume. Depending on area the wing could be closer the 45' of the Hornet/Whirlwind.
 
The body stretch isn't that big a deal IMO, they stretched the P-40 a couple of feet and it didn't seem hard to do (no big delay in manufacturing) or to add much weight. Several other WW2 aircraft were similarly stretched for greater stability with higher HP engines.

The wings are potentially a big deal and may be necessary if you put in Merlins or Allisons, but I'm a fan of the Peregrine.

Small is big!

Could they put the air ducts outboard of the engines?
 
It offers slightly more HP if at all and a massive increase in drag, a larger swept volume means it needs more fuel and just swapping engines gets the nacelles very close to the fuselage. It would have even lower performance and as well as poor roll performance compared to a S/E fighter it would have all the issues of the P-38 with compressibility in a dive.
 
There were basically two Perseus engines.
The fully supercharged version with a 12 in impeller and making 880-890hp at 14,500-15,500ft at 2750rpm and about 750hp for take-off
and the versions with 10 or 9.25 in impellers which made 905hp at 6,500ft and about 830hp for take-off.
The XA was about as good as it got with 950hp for take-off using 5lbs of boost and 100/130 fuel.
Most of the Perseus engines were rated on 87 octane and were kept under 3lbs of boost.

The Perseus seems to have had some real problems trying to run high boost pressures (assuming the supercharger could even supply the pressure).
It used pretty much Hercules cylinders and it took quite a while to sort out the Hercules to where it would tolerate much in the way of boost pressures.

The Peregrine's supercharger could move enough air to let the engine make around 1400hp at sea level if the available fuel would have allowed it.
The potential power of the Perseus was not even close.
The idea should be to make a better Whirlwind, even if it is not a high altitude or long range fighter. Unfortunately with the Perseus engines it might be hard pressed to outperform the Hurricane II at which point it really becomes a why bother.

The drag of the two radials is just too much to overcome using standard british cowlings of the time. (first 1/2 of the war?)
 
As a piece of AH. At the same time as it is decided to ditch the Vullture on the Handley Page for 4 Merlins the same is done for the Manchester. Now the Vulture customer is the Warwick and the Tornado. The 2,000bhp alternatives are the Centaurus and Sabre. Some efficiency bean counter decides to save all the effort and goes for jets and boosting what we have already so no Centaurus or Sabre. The Vulture development carries across to the Peregrine so the research is still used. A 2,000+bhp 4 cannon single seat fighter is still needed and the Merlin in service use is not yet even looking at that sort of power. The answer is instead of gluing 2 twelve cylinder engines into a flat 24 or X24 let us ramp up the Peregrine and tweak the existing Whirlwind into 2 x V12 on 2,000+bhp.

Just to go separately even further AH reverse the pilot and gun positions and put 2 x 40mm S guns, belt fed, behind him and let someone like English Electric actually get production running properly. Westlands acting as the design and trials office.
 
The 40mm S guns may have been good for tank busting and perhaps barge strafing but not much else. Think 40mm MK 108 but firing really, really slow. The Hispano fires 6 times faster so trading 2 Hispanos for one S gun means you are trading 12 20mm shells for each 40mm shell. Not too bad if you can hit but hitting is going to be a real problem between the low velocity and the abysmal rate of fire.
 
yulzari said:
The answer is instead of gluing 2 twelve cylinder engines into a flat 24 or X24 let us ramp up the Peregrine and tweak the existing Whirlwind into 2 x V12 on 2,000+bhp.
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I like this, and if we can keep the Peregrine's dimensions and weight down, we might have an engine for a lightweight, smaller single-engined fighter. I'd want to offshore the engine production away from RR though (and likely the aircraft as well), as they clearly don't have the capacity to produce more than one engine type at a time. The Griffon came on board after years of expansion.
 
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But really, the only thing I want to change on the Whirlwind is its entry into service date. So we need to make changes to its development path and timing. Do that, and we'll have a half dozen squadrons in service by the BoF.
 
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