Post war naval aviation

Well i said it was a beast..:D

Just surprised as that is 12 foot more that a Bristol Britannia unit which is 16ft. Also must have been some serious undercarriage to give over 13ft of clearance.

Jon

EDIT – Just checked and the whole unit was 13ft rather than just one blade.

It amazes me that there were so few built, less than 130 including prototypes. Still, I suppose that that was not unusual with our military aircraft.

So it had a 26ft diameter prop assembly?!? Crikey

Jon

Well i said it was a beast..:D

who in there right mind would want to get in the way of eight 13′ diameter contra-rotating propellers

So it had a 26ft diameter prop assembly?!? Crikey

Jon

Hi Dave,
Well i’ve always had an interest in naval aviation but it all started really with a book by Harold Penrose (Westland chief test pilot) called ‘Adventure With Fate’, in which the trials and tribulations of trying to get such a ground breaking aircraft into service were made all to clear.. and after doing some research into the Wyvern it just captured for me what 1950’s aviation was all about.. its just an awesome beast.. and the rest as they say is history.

As for Reno i think it would have done pretty well.. after all who in there right mind would want to get in the way of eight 13′ diameter contra-rotating propellers on the front of a 3600 shp jet engine.?:dev2:

Thanks for showing those Wyverfan. Tough times for Fleet Air Arm crews the 50′ and 60’s weren’t they, with damned high casualty rates.

My I ask you the perhaps ‘difficult question’…why ‘Wyverfan’?
It was in many ways a pig of an aircraft wasn’t it.? So much power and a landing aspect that made it pretty dangerous, certainly compared with say a SeaHawk.
Great looking plane though! Wonder how one of those would have done in ‘Reno Unlimited ‘racing!

Dave T