Hi
Thanks for the info, by sheer luck I just found my notes:D and the pages on the 40mm cannon:D

one interesting I found whilst browsing was a letter on the four cannon and three .303 nose

the letter was dated 23 june 1940 to westlands from RDL

….It is requested however, that the auxiliary fuel tank proposal shall continue as required in our letter to the firm dated 31st may..:confused:

interesting I will have to delve deeper.

cheers
Jerry

Jerry

As far as I know the nose fuel tank was never installed. The Air Min had no interest in the additional three Brownings, but did order a TI of the Hydran ammunition feed and the additional tank. With the Hydran feed the guns were arranged in a horizontal row which made room for the tank above (as opposed to the two up, two down arrangement of the standard, drum-fed installation.)

L6844 went to A&AEE for ground and air firing trials with the Hydran feed with a single Hispano (photographs of the aircraft in this condition are always mis-captioned in books and articles as being of a trial of some imaginary 37mm or 40mm installation even though the gun is clearly a Hispano 404). The trials showed up a few problems, but were promising. When BTH made additional left and right hand feeds available the aircraft went back to A&AEE with a full set of four Hydran-fed Hispanos. The problems found in the earlier trials remained and a new one was found. The feed consumed compressed air at such a prodigous rate that the air pressure quickly dropped below the point at which it would operate. The Whirlwind of course had no pneumatic system, just a fixed bottle. Because of this and the other issues no air firing was carried out.

The Hydran feed was abandoned and effort concentrated on the French Chatelleraut feed. Westland were asked to make a TI with the Chatelleraut feed for which the guns reverted to a two up, two down arrangement which then left no room for the additional fuel tank. L6844 was tested in this configuration at A&AEE before going to the Aircraft Gun Mounting Establishment at Duxford where it suffered tail plane damage from ejected cases/links during air firing trials. When AGME was absorbed by A&AEEand moved out from Duxford L6844 was left behind, unserviceable, nominally on the books of Duxford-based AFDU, but not used by them.

Niall