- Thread starter
-
- #481
Ad: This forum contains affiliate links to products on Amazon and eBay. More information in Terms and rules
????You're joking, right?? A dive speed of 390 mph IAS WAS SERIOUSLY LIMITED for combat! The Spitfire was slated for 450 - 480 mph IAS; various 109 models 750 km/h or 466 mph; can't find the dive speeds for Fw 190A, but it could outdive the Spitfire V with ease. Climbing speed was just as important and once again the Hurricane II lagged way behind.
Design studies and we have no idea of the modifications required to boost a Hurricane's speed to 425mph. Presumably he realised it would be just far too much of a redesign and might as well start from scratch, which is why he went on to design the Fury/Sea Fury family.
Not without adding an intercooler radiator, thus forcing a major redesign of the cooling system.
For sure, but why suspend development of a far better fighter in the hope of maybe improving the Hurricane enough to make it into a fighter with Spitfire V like performance?
Also, please explain how the fabric covering of the rear fuselage, fin, rudder and horizontal control surfaces would have coped at 400 mph + horizontal flight.
Oh wow 44 Hurricanes for 16 109s - mostly Fs, but doesn't how many...no source given.
According to Mason's Hawker Hurricane A/c Since 1920 (1961) p. 252 Hurri Mk IV featured 350lb more armour than Mk II. If much better armoured Il-2 was still vulnerable to 20mm AAA fire, surely Hurri Mk IV was even more vulnerable. And experience proved that, Mk IVs were used in ETO late 43 early 44 but proved to be too vulnerable and were replaced by Typhoons asap.
Juha
No it wasn't limiting. You're confusing Vne with ability to actually attain these speeds and/or the ability to accelerate in a dive. The Hurricane's draggy wings meant it simply didn't have enough power to exceed Vne in a dive.
Camm did and he said it could be done. However, he didn't do it because there was already a suitable aircraft in production, namely the Spitfire. The Tornado/Typhoon/Tempest and Fury were designed around much more powerful engines than the Griffon but if the Hurricane was the only game in town then, in all probability, it would have been given the Merlin 60/Griffon because these were proven engines that were suited to it it's weight and airframe size.
That wasn't much of an obstacle for the Spitfire and Mustang and probably not for the Hurricane either.
Which fighter are you talking about?As I've explained the Merlin and Griffon were not suitable engines for Hawker's follow ons to the Hurricane.
So, you are saying that the Hurricame was so limited that it could not reach its limiting speed?
The Griffon wasn't around when the Tornado/Typhoon began development.
The Griffon first ran in late 1939. Like many other wartime projects, development was put on the backburner during the BoB.
The Griffon was intended for FAA aircraft. It was a because of suggestion from a member of the AM that investigations to install the Griffon in the Spitfire were initiated. Subsequently the Griffon was redesigned to help it fit in the Spit. I suppose that might have happened with the Hurricane, but with the Tornado/Typhoon under development I suspect not. Production Griffons don't appear until 1942.
The Merlin 60 was intended for use in the high altitude Wellington. It was Lord Hives that suggested that it might work well in the Spitfire. No Spitfire, would Hives suggest the Merlin 61 for the Hurricane? Again, I suspect not, due to the Tornado/Typhoon.
The Mustang X had an intercooler radiator mounted in the nose, which was found to be unsatisfactory.
The P-61B had a largely redesigned cooling matrix.
The Spitfire VIII/IX had double the radiator area of the V.
Because the Tornado/Typhoon were big, heavy monsters.
No it wasn't limiting. You're confusing Vne with ability to actually attain these speeds and/or the ability to accelerate in a dive. The Hurricane's draggy wings meant it simply didn't have enough power to exceed Vne in a dive. OTOH, some aircraft such as the 109/190/p47/P38 had to be careful to avoid approaching Vne due to compressability problems.
Camm did and he said it could be done. However, he didn't do it because there was already a suitable aircraft in production, namely the Spitfire. The Tornado/Typhoon/Tempest and Fury were designed around much more powerful engines than the Griffon but if the Hurricane was the only game in town then, in all probability, it would have been given the Merlin 60/Griffon because these were proven engines that were suited to it it's weight and airframe size.
That wasn't much of an obstacle for the Spitfire and Mustang and probably not for the Hurricane either.
Which fighter are you talking about?As I've explained the Merlin and Griffon were not suitable engines for Hawker's follow ons to the Hurricane.
The data was from Malta, the Spitfire Years and it wasn't 16 109Fs for 44 Hurricanes, it was 80 Luftwaffe aircraft for 44 Hurricanes.
A Vne of 390 mph = a TAS of ~546mph.
Having a Vne higher than the aircraft can reach is a good thing! And it explains why no Hurricane was ever lost from structural failure.
Given the similarities between the Henley and the HH, the engineering to fit the Griffon was already done.
Right no one else would have ever suggested it for Spitfire or Hurricane, even though Camm wanted to fit a Griffon in the HH?
Yet these aircraft initially had no intercooler, and then they had...amazing what engineers can do.
Monsters that the AM wanted because of their speed and firepower.
The Henley carried it's bombs on the centre-line so the rad had to go somewhere else. We know, from previous discussion in this thread, that Camm was working on the thin wing Tempest in March 1940 and this is probably about the same time or so that he made his Griffon proposal; this suggests that he may have inserted a thin wing into the Griffon Hurricane design as well.The Henley was an engine test hack for Rolls-Royce. So the engine installation may not have been applicable to the Hurricane, probably not for production either. Henley also had a different radiator layout.
And it still doesn't escape the fact that the Griffon wasn't available until 1942.
Also, Spitfire with Griffon II (which would have been the version in Camm's estimates) made 400mph. Can't take an estimate that suggests a 425mph Griffon Hurricane seriously. Particularly when it is faster than estimates for the Spitfire, which had been faster on the same engines from the start.
Someone may have suggested the Merlin 61 for the Spitfire, but Hives was the first.
As far as I know, nobody suggested the Merlin 61 for the Hurricane (except you) - not even Camm.
Camm may have wanted the Griffon for his baby. But is there any suggestion that anyone else seriouly considered it?
They needed more cooling capacity - and nt just for the intercooler. That would mean a heavy redesign of the Hurricane's radiator.
The initial Tornado prototype used a radiator in a similar position to the Hurricane. It didn't work well. So not sure that an enlarged Hurricane rad in teh normal position would necessarily have worked out well.
They wanted the speed and firepower. They didn't necessarily want the behemoths that they got.
FWIW, Spitfire was eventually able to have the same firepower (ie 4 x 20mm cannon, not the 12 x 0.303" from the initial specification) with the C-wing.
The performance of those monsters was also disappointing to the AM. And it was matched, or exceeded in some measures, by Spitfires in short order.
These are just design details that were eminently solvable.
The Spitfire was never able to match the low level speeds (the Typhoon never had a two stage blower) plus the 4 x 20mm outfit was very rare and it never carried the ammo or bomb load of the Typhoon/tempest, however compared to the USAAF/USN PW2800 engined fighters, the Hawkers were rather svelte.
Mason compared the IVD to the IID (in Hawker Hurricane) which was already relatively well armoured .
What aircraft wasn't vulnerable to 20mm fire? Experience showed that the Soviets were willing to use much slower aircraft than the HHIV for ground attack. The HH IV was largely phased out of W. Europe because better aircraft came along, however this doesn't mean that the HH IV couldn't have done the job if needs be.
Hawker document covering the proposed Griffon Hurricane, page 2 is missing, however, my hand written note gives:-
330mph at 8,000ft
370mph at 23,000ft
Time to 20,000ft 6.5 mins.
Hurricane V
Neil.
Spitfire XIV Performance
Typhoon IB Performance Data
Tempest V Performance Data
The Tempest did not carry bombs operationally during WW2.
Thanks very much for the info - really interesting stuff!
I note the great disparity between the proposed performance for this aircraft and the proposal mentioned by Morgan and Shacklady - do you have any thoughts on the differences between the two?
Hawker document covering the proposed Griffon Hurricane, page 2 is missing, however, my hand written note gives:-
330mph at 8,000ft
370mph at 23,000ft
Time to 20,000ft 6.5 mins.
Easy! 370 mph at 23,000 ft is far more realistic than 425 mph. The Hurricane needed to be modified more than the Spitfire to use the Griffon, including moving the wing forward, with a new centre section to retain the cg within limits and, as expected for the Merlin 61, the cooling system was to be radically modified: the Spitfire VC, by comparison, needed a strengthened main longeron and other local modifications to achieve 397 mph at 17,900 ft Spitfire Mk XII DP.845 Report so that 30 mph gap still existed, in spite of the modifications. Thanks for the insight Neil.
I meant, of course, the Merlin Spitfires.
T...I note the great disparity between the proposed performance for this aircraft and the proposal mentioned by Morgan and Shacklady - do you have any thoughts on the differences between the two?...