From Bristol Bulldog to Spitfire, Handley Page Heyford to Lancaster - the revolution in aircraft design in the late 1930s

[Kickstart]

40 minutes ago, whart57 said:

 

There is a tendency to see fighter development in the 1930s as being Spitfire vs Messerschmidt 109, the two technically most superior protagonists. The Hurricane probably only made it to 1939 because it was, correctly, judged to be easier to maintain and repair under combat conditions as well as being able to be manufactured by the likes of car factories. However there were a dozen or more other designs in front line service in 1939 and 1940. France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Russia all had domestic aero companies that had produced front-line fighters. Most were performing at around 300 mph top speed - like the Hurricane - and most were under-armed compared to the British and German fighters. The designers were well aware of that but they were working with inferior power plants and couldn't accept the weight of more guns - and ammunition - and sourcing the 20mm cannon they really wanted was nigh impossible.

 

France had the Dewoitine D520. Performance was just below that of the Spitfire and BF109 (~350mph), and superior to the ~340mph of the Hurricane. Further it was equipped with a 20mm cannon.

 

All the best

 

Katy

[whart57]

37 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

And yet to this day Russia still bombs cities into destruction as a tactic to demoralise citizens.

 

More out of frustration than anything else I suspect though.

[whart57]

31 minutes ago, Kickstart said:

 

France had the Dewoitine D520. Performance was just below that of the Spitfire and BF109 (~350mph), and superior to the ~340mph of the Hurricane. Further it was equipped with a 20mm cannon.

 

True, but it didn't enter service until March 1940 and as a result was not available in enough numbers to sway the air war over France two months later. The French mainstay, the Morane-Saulnier MS406, was one of that plethora of c 300 mph designs I referred to. Which included the Mk1 Hurricanes that formed the bulk of Fighter Command in 1940, that 340 mph speed was only achieved by the Mk2 powered by the new Merlin XX engine which entered squadron service in late 1940.

[whart57]

So other European airforces front line fighters at the outbreak of WW2 in September 1939

 

Poland (PZL P.11)

 

 

Netherlands and Finland  (Fokker D.21)

 

(© Ad Meskens / Wikimedia Commons)

 

France and Finland (Morane-Saulnier MS.406)

 

 

Italy (Macchi c.200)

 

 

And this is just scratching the surface. Italy had at least two other types in service, and the French had others too. And that is without considering the two-engined fighters and fighter-bombers.

[PupCam]

I would say the two most significant developments from the start of the period mentioned was the science of aerodynamics and the aluminium monocoque structure with the huge increases in performance (but not always reliability) of propulsion as a very close third.        The last of course being complicated by the new kid on the block; the gas turbine.

 

Interesting discussion.

 

Alan

[Kickstart]

1 hour ago, whart57 said:

 

True, but it didn't enter service until March 1940 and as a result was not available in enough numbers to sway the air war over France two months later. The French mainstay, the Morane-Saulnier MS406, was one of that plethora of c 300 mph designs I referred to. Which included the Mk1 Hurricanes that formed the bulk of Fighter Command in 1940, that 340 mph speed was only achieved by the Mk2 powered by the new Merlin XX engine which entered squadron service in late 1940.

 

Yes the D520 wasn't available in sufficient numbers.

 

The Mk1 Hurricane was capable of 324mph, but that was using the later propeller rather than the early 2 blade Watts propeller, and 12lbs of boost, so Battle Of Britain performance (lower octane fuel allowing only 6lbs of boost dropped it by ~7mph). Presume ~300mph top speed would be with the 2 blade fixed pitch propeller.

 

For comparison the BF109D which had been in production until 1939 and was still in use during the invasion of Poland was managed around 300mph (roughly the same as a Bolton Paul Defiant Mk1)

 

Both possibly show how critical the timing was on the start and progress of hostilities

 

All the best

 

Katy

[F-UnitMad]

8 hours ago, whart57 said:

Which really leads to the conclusion that it was the Rolls Royce Merlin that won the Battle of Britain, not the Spitfire.

I thought that was common knowledge anyway, seeing as the Hurricane shot down more enemy planes during the battle than everything else (Spitfires, Bofors AA, etc) combined. 

[whart57]

1 hour ago, F-UnitMad said:

I thought that was common knowledge anyway, seeing as the Hurricane shot down more enemy planes during the battle than everything else (Spitfires, Bofors AA, etc) combined. 

 

Well there were many more Hurricanes. Wasn't there also a tactic to have the Spitfire squadrons engage the fighter escorts leaving the easier target of the bombers to the Hurricanes?

 

Aircraft shot down is a statistic open to interpretation. The Dutch airforce had an impressive performance on that in the five day war, until you realise that most of their hits were Ju52 transports. Though that was actually significant, those Ju52s were part of the German airborne troops strategy, take an airfield with paratroopers and then when the runway was secured fly in the reinforcements in transport planes with heavier equipment. That strategy didn't work.

[burgundy]

If anyone wishes to see what the structure of a Hurricane looks like, in contrast to that of a Spitfire, have a look at the BBMF site with the photo of LF363 after it had made a crash landing at RAF Wittering. 

I saw it shortly afterwards when a competition was being run for its "major maintenance", and the charred remains were in a corner of the BBMF's hanger, for inspection by the potential bidders. The accident happened because the engine stopped as the aircraft was approaching Wittering and the pilot managed to make a heavy landing with no power. He exited smartly and suffered only a broken ankle. The aircraft caught fire and you will see from the photo that all the fabric skin on the fuselage has burned off. All the wooden stringers were charred and the engine did not look as though it was going anywhere soon. Essentially, the bidders got the tubular metal framing that kept the engine, the main spar and the pilot in close formation. The tail number was serviceable and appeared to be the basis for the reconstruction. 

Best wishes 

Eric   

[F-UnitMad]

3 hours ago, whart57 said:

Well there were many more Hurricanes.

With Merlin engines. So I was agreeing with what you put, that it was the Merlin that won the Battle of Britain. 

[JeremyC]

Some years ago I read an article that argued that the most important factor in the advance of aviation was engine design rather than aircraft design. 

[whart57]

We should also consider the development of heavier fighters with twin engines, a crew of two and heavier armament than carried by single seaters. The design drivers were varied. Rifle calibre guns were deemed insufficient as higher speeds of bombers meant the opportunity of getting in a sustained burst of fire was shrinking. Heavier guns needed to be carried. A longer range was required for an escort fighter role, a flawed idea since heavier twin engined fighters could not be expected to be as agile as the single seat opponents they would encounter when escorting bombers. Army generals liked the idea of fast ground attack aircraft the act as highly mobile artillery so that was another role. The final role, and the one where most designs found their niche, was as a night fighter, particularly when radar could be taken up into the air.

 

However, all those roles did make the designs appear to be the camel as horse designed by committee implementation. As with the single seat designs too, engine limitations and limitations of supply or development of chosen engines hampered production and deployment.

 

The British Air Ministry issued a specification for a twin engined fighter in 1935, but with Hawker and Supermarine fully committed to Hurricane and Spitfire development it fell to the Westland and Bristol companies to come up with serious solutions. Westland came up with the Whirlwind.

 

 

Initially promising, problems with its RR Peregrines delayed things and when they were resolved the Spitfire had already been developed to carry 20mm cannon, thus negating the main value of the Whirlwind.

 

The Bristol company had responded to a challenge to develop the world's fastest civil airliner, and that led in turn to the Blenheim bomber. The speed of the Blenheim compared to the existing biplane fighters of the RAF resulted  in a fighter variant of the Blenheim being produced. Obviously a stopgap but further development of the basic plan eventually led to the Bristol Beaufighter

 

 

This entered service in mid-1940, just in time to prove its worth as a night fighter during the Blitz.

 

RAF Bomber Command had in the meantime given up on daylight operations to Germany so no longer had need of escort fighters.

 

Across in Germany, Hermann Göring was a big advocate of the heavy fighter/bomber destroyer concept and that led to the Messerschmidt Bf110.

 

 

As an escort fighter it proved wanting against Hurricanes and Spitfires in the Battle of Britain, but its range and heavy armament made it a formidable night fighter and ground attack aircraft. It too would carry radar once the Germans had developed it.

 

The heavy fighter concept was also taken up by the Dutch Fokker company as a private venture. This resulted in the Fokker G.1

 

 

The Dutch airforce would eventually take it up and order 36 to equip two squadrons. Considering that Fokker was limited to using the Bristol Mercury VIII engine rather than the more powerful ones available to its rivals the G.1 acquitted itself well enough in the very uneven contest of the five day war in May 1940.

 

The Americans would bring the P38 Lightning into the war a couple of years later, but the heavy fighter concept didn't really excite other aircraft building countries.

[pH]

Fighter variants of the Mosquito?

Edited January 14, 2023 by pH

[mow]

The Secret Horsepower Race by Callum Douglas is a great volume on engine development for fighters in this period. I can thoroughly recommend it. 

 

I had wondered why the Italian development of inline aircraft engines floundered in the 1930s, perhaps embargoes on ores and metals for engineering had an impact after Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia, perhaps the Regia Aeronautica was also hamstrung by poor decisions made re engine development, and material use.

 

https://ospreypublishing.com/us/osprey-blog/2018/the-regia-aeronautica-another-victim-of-mussolini-s-regime/

[whart57]

2 hours ago, pH said:

Fighter variants of the Mosquito?

 

Sure, but in my mind this topic is limited to the designs that were coming into service when WW2 came West in May 1940. The Lancaster was after all supposed to be the Manchester

[Ozexpatriate]

9 hours ago, whart57 said:

The Americans would bring the P38 Lightning into the war a couple of years later, but the heavy fighter concept didn't really excite other aircraft building countries.

There are other US two-engined fighter/attack aircraft - some of which were in design in the late 1930s.

 

The Douglas A-20 (Havoc) which first flew in 1939 comes to mind. It was contemporaneous with the P-38.

 

Later US two-engined fighter aircraft would include the Northrop P-61 (Black Widow), and Grumman F7F (Tiger Cat) which were of course very much wartime designs.

 

I'd consider the Douglas A-26 (Invader) in this category too - as an "attack aircraft", though one could argue that is distinct from a fighter. While single engined, the Hawker Typhoon was supposed to be a fighter that excelled as an "attack aircraft". 

[Hroth]

The Hawker Typhoon was designed as a high altitude interceptor but suffered from problems with wing design, leading to its use as a ground attack aircraft.  The Hawker Tempest was a MK2 Typhoon with a redesigned wing and performance improvements and so was given a new name.  In RAF slang, the Tempest was "a Tiffy with the bugs ironed out" and was effective in intercepting both V1s and Me 262s.

 

Hawker Typhoon

Hawker Tempest

 

[OnTheBranchline]

On 12/01/2023 at 12:58, F-UnitMad said:

I thought that was common knowledge anyway, seeing as the Hurricane shot down more enemy planes during the battle than everything else (Spitfires, Bofors AA, etc) combined. 

 Shhhh don’t let facts get in the way of the Spitfire narrative…

[OnTheBranchline]

Why did WW2 RAF bombers for the most part not have ventral/ball turrets compared to contemporary USAF bombers?

[pH]

1 hour ago, OnTheBranchline said:

Why did WW2 RAF bombers for the most part not have ventral/ball turrets compared to contemporary USAF bombers?

https://web.cs.dal.ca/~johnston/poetry/turretgunner.html

 

No protection against flak?

 

A few early Lancasters did have ventral turrets:

 

http://www.warbirdsresourcegroup.org/BARC/lancaster-armament.html

 

(This explains why it was removed/not used further, and also why some were re-installed later.)

Edited February 3, 2023 by pH

[jjb1970]

On 16/01/2023 at 01:11, OnTheBranchline said:

 Shhhh don’t let facts get in the way of the Spitfire narrative…

 

It's also important not to get carried away by the Hurricane narrative. The Spitfire was more difficult to manufacture but it had much better performance than the Hurricane and remained an effective front line fighter through the war and with the exception of range it basically took the piston engined fighter almost as far as it could be developed. The Hurricane was already falling behind the pace in 1940 and was increasingly deployed in secondary theatres and/or against lesser opposition and as a fighter/bomber. If fighter command had an all Hurricane force in the summer of 1940 it would have been much more difficult to win.

[whart57]

6 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

The Hurricane was already falling behind the pace in 1940 and was increasingly deployed in secondary theatres and/or against lesser opposition and as a fighter/bomber.

 

That does re-emphasise the importance of the Rolls-Royce Merlin. Those "secondary theatres" meant against the Italians or the Japanese. The airframes of the best Italian and Japanese fighters were up to the standard of the Spitfire or Bf109, but their power plants were inferior to the Merlin and the German Daimler-Benz job, allowing the Hurricane, with a better power plant, to compete.

[OnTheBranchline]

6 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

 

It's also important not to get carried away by the Hurricane narrative. The Spitfire was more difficult to manufacture but it had much better performance than the Hurricane and remained an effective front line fighter through the war and with the exception of range it basically took the piston engined fighter almost as far as it could be developed. The Hurricane was already falling behind the pace in 1940 and was increasingly deployed in secondary theatres and/or against lesser opposition and as a fighter/bomber. If fighter command had an all Hurricane force in the summer of 1940 it would have been much more difficult to win.

Shhhh don’t let people downplay the Hurricane narrative because it’s not popular…

 

🤭

[PupCam]

6 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

 

It's also important not to get carried away by the Hurricane narrative. The Spitfire was more difficult to manufacture but it had much better performance than the Hurricane and remained an effective front line fighter through the war and with the exception of range it basically took the piston engined fighter almost as far as it could be developed. The Hurricane was already falling behind the pace in 1940 and was increasingly deployed in secondary theatres and/or against lesser opposition and as a fighter/bomber. If fighter command had an all Hurricane force in the summer of 1940 it would have been much more difficult to win.

 

And it's important not to get carried away with the Spitfire was more difficult to build narrative ......

 

The Spitfire wasn't more difficult to build it just used techniques that weren't regularly in use at that time and in fact completely alien at the time  Those techniques of course became common place subsequently.    The Hurricane was  actually a relatively complex structure with many sizes and sections of material, fittings and a lot of work involved in forming and assembling etc etc.     Damage susceptibility was a bit of a pot luck thing as there was a lot fresh air (good!) in the structure particularly in the rear fuselage.   If a round happened to find all of that fresh air on its way through all well and good - repair might be as simple as a linen patch doped on to cover entry and exit holes.   BUT of course it could just as easily have found some of the real structure.

 

I can thoroughly recommend (usual caveats) this particularly excellent book on the subject that makes this case.

 

 

ISBN 978-1861266309

 

The Hurricane was a fantastic aircraft and saved Britain through its BoB exploits but was no doubt at that limit of its development.    The virtually contemporary Spitfire was just at the beginning of it's development and a more different aeroplane at the end of that development is hard to imagine!    There was a very good reason why there were over 22000 Spitfires built.

 

I'm not really one for "this was better than that" comparisons - they seem rather pointless.   IMHO in the case of the Spitfire and Hurricane it's definitely a kin to comparing apples with oranges.    Would the BoB have been won with only Hurricanes?   Maybe not.   Would the BoB have been won with only Spitfires?  Maybe not.   What is certain is that the combination of both available at the time saved the day!   Anyway its a bit like the discussion on WW regarding best layouts ....   

 

Amusingly a friend and I were recently discussing our favourite aircraft and very soon came to the conclusion that we might to have a different favourite in a number of categories.  Then we had trouble nailing down the categories and thought some might need to split up into different favourites in different sub-categories  .... 🤣

 

Alan

[Hroth]

And Hawker more or less "retired" the Hurricane after the BoB and went on to develop the Typhoon and the Tempest.