View attachment 716178from a model kit
View attachment 716179
Looks to me like there was room to move forward some, but would leave some space above the legs, as you point out.
But why the desire to put a gravity fed fuel tank there, and not the oil tank/glycol tank or cowl guns, as other nations did with that area?
Why not move the cockpit forward some, and relocate the oil tank from by the wing to ahead of the instrument panel, and have the reserve tank just behind the seat, with the radio gear ontop?
What this would look like, is similar to the P-51 layout
View attachment 716180
The goal is to keep fuel from a punctured fuel tank from streaming into the cockpit by the windstream.
Yeah, hot Oil and/or hot glycol would not be an enjoyable bath either, but worlds better than the 'Blow torch intensity flame'
At 600 yards, too far away to register, Page opened fire on one of the leading machines, then abruptly stopped short. One moment there had been clear sky between himself and thirty Dorniers. Now the air was criss-crossed with a fusillade of glinting white tracer-cannon shells converging on the Hurricanes. He saw Gracie's machine peel from the attack; the distance between Page and the leading bombers was only thirty yards now. Strikes from his machine-gun fire flashed in winking daggers of light from a Dornier's port engine; it was suddenly a desperate race to destroy before he himself was destroyed.
As a thunderclap explosion tore at his eardrums, Page's first reaction was: I can't have been hit. It could happen to other people, but not me. Then all at once fear surged again as an ugly ragged hole gaped in his starboard wing. And then the petrol tank behind the engine, sited on a level with his chest, blew up like a bomb; flames seared through the cockpit like a prairie fire, clawing greedily towards the draught from the open hood. A voice Page barely recognized was screaming in mortal terror: Dear God, save me — save me, dear God.'
Desperately he grappled with the Sutton harness, head reared back from the licking flames, seeing with horror the bare skin of his hands on the control column shrivelling like burnt parchment in the blast furnace of heat. Struggling, he screamed and screamed again. Somehow — he would never know how — he extricated himself from the cockpit, and began falling like a stone, powerless to stop.
Richard Collier Eagle Day - The Battle of Britain Hodder & Stoughton 1966