"Sawn-Off" Tiffies

follow up

Hi All,
Maybe of interest , just found a photo in an old aerojournal, ( No 29 ) of a Hurricane IIc with it’s cannons removed , exactly the same as the tiffie, the hurricane photo was captioned that it was with a met flight.
Cheers
Jerry

trials

Hi,
Might it have been useful to have cameras in the cannon ports ?
Of interest in mar/apr ’43 trials were being undertaken of the first 1000Lb bombs on tiffies.
Cheers
Jerry

R8831 ‘EL-U’ was used for bomb richochet trials at Ashley Walk Range (New Forest) between 11 March 43 and 2 April 43. Don’t know why this required the removal of the cannons/cannon barrels. Typhoons had been carrying 250 or 500 lbrs for about 6 months by then.
Cranswick

[QUOTE=whalebone]”It’s the wing I tells ya” :rolleyes:
anneorac has got it, the shorter gun was a later devlopment

Not sure how this helps old chap. The quote talks about the NACA 22 series wing which found it’s way onto the Tempest (originally called the Typhoon II).

The photos of R8831 show a standard Typhoon Mk.Ib with it’s cannons removed.

Anne

“It’s the wing I tells ya” :rolleyes:
anneorac has got it, the shorter gun was a later devlopment

From the website I linked to: quote

“Work had been going on in the Hawker design office since 1940 on the development of a new thin wing section. It had already been established that the N.A.C.A.22-series wing section employed by the Typhoon was entirely satisfactory at speeds in the vicinity of 400 m.p.h. but encountered compressibility effects at higher speeds. In dives approaching 500 m.p.h. a very sudden and sharp increase in drag was experienced, accompanied by a change in the aerodynamic characteristics of the fighter, which affected the pitching moment and rendered the machine nose heavy. No actual design work on the new wing was begun until September 1941, and the wing section eventually adopted for development had its point of maximum thickness at 37.5% of the chord. The thickness/cord ratio was 14.5% at the root and 10% at the tip, giving a wing five inches thinner at the root than that of the Typhoon.

This thin wing could not contain a comparable quantity of fuel to that housed by the Typhoon’s wing, so a large fuselage tank had to be adopted. This necessitated the introduction of an additional fuselage bay, increasing the overall length by twenty-one inches forward of the c.g. This added length found its inevitable compensation after initial prototype trials in a larger fin and tailplane. The wing area was also increased, and an elliptical planform was adopted, presenting a chord sufficient to permit the four 20-mm. Hispano cannon to be almost completely buried in the wing. All these modifications added up to a radically changed Typhoon, but it was as the Typhoon II that two prototypes were ordered in November 1941″

Hi all

As someone who used to play with these types of weapons for a living a Hispano would not benefit from shortning at all and would I imagine not function correctly without a lot of modification – I would opt for their not being there.

Regards
John P

At the risk of going off topic slightly. If you were playing with Hispano’s from Meteors, Vampires or other aircraft of that era you were playing with the short ones. Short being a relative term where Hispanos are concerned but the Mk.V series were 12″ shorter than the Mks.I & II.

Anne (the pedantic)

cannons

Hi Setter,
You might be able to answer a question for me ,

Could a Oerlikon be fitted in place of a hispano ?
I imagine at least all the mounts would be different, any ideas if this was feasible ? or a no go ?
Did something like shell feeding make it impossible.
It’s just something I was told years ago that some were fitted to a typhoon, but I can’t see any advantage, and never been able to prove / disprove.
Cheers
Jerry

Hi all

As someone who used to play with these types of weapons for a living a Hispano would not benefit from shortning at all and would I imagine not function correctly without a lot of modification – I would opt for their not being there.

Regards
John P

Cheers Jerry,I knew someone on here would have the answer. 🙂

photos

Hi,
found the photos on page 66 of typhoon & tempest by Mason, caption reads :-

‘ two views of ex-No 181 squadron typhoon R8831 / EL-U on test with 500Lb bombs ( photos via R.C.Strurtivant )’

If … this was the first flight of 500lbs, double the previous load, it would make sense to remove the cannons, to see how the a/c handled with the new load.
Also explains why there are so many different angles of the a/c, if it was under test.
Cheers
Jerry

From the information here http://www.aviation-history.com/hawker/typhoon.html
(about 3/4 of the way down the page) it appears to be something to do with a
re-design of the wing.

Thanks for the response guys,I had considered the possibility of the guns being removed. It does seem odd though that some of these short-barrelled examples are pictured carrying bombs,and not particularly large bombs either. The bombs EL-U carries in the photo look like 250lb’rs,and I know the Tiffie could handle 2 x 500lb with no trouble,so it seems unlikely that they would’ve been removed to save weight. The stripey example in Daz’s first photo is also carrying bombs (perhaps the underside of same machine?)
Btw,thanks for the pics Daz 🙂

So then it should still have its military fit in those photos? I thought it might have been testing bombs or something with its armament removed.

Was R8831 a trials aircraft? If so, that might explain the possibility of there being no cannons. What unit wore the codes EL and operated Typhoons?

EL was 181 Sqn. They operated a mix of Typhoon 1A/1B from Sep 42 – Dec 42. After that, it was 1B’s until disbandment in Sep 45

BR

Laurie.

Was R8831 a trials aircraft? If so, that might explain the possibility of there being no cannons. What unit wore the codes EL and operated Typhoons?

cannons

Hi,
If there are short barreled typhoons it’s a new one on me.
There was supposedly Oerlikon cannons used in place of Hispano, but this was disputed, last time I mentioned this in a thread on another board.
Always assumed as the only photos seem to be of a series EL-U , R8831, from different angles, that the cannons for some reason [weight ?] are removed.
Can’t see how the cannon would work cut off, wasn’t the end the recoil spring?
FR I B’s had one pair of cannons removed and fairings this length, but they housed the cameras.
Cheers
Jerry

Looks very much like they don’t have their cannons fitted. I’ve seen many photos of Typhoons with short fairings and their Hispano barrels sticking out the end very much like how they appear on the Hurricane Mk. IIc. I’m not sure if the longer two part (I think) fairings were a latter add on or if some units just did away with them for ease of maintenance. The aircraft pictured appear to have the short fairings but without their cannons.

Anne

Here’s a better-quality shot of a short-barrel Typhoon, and one of a ‘normal’ Typhoon.

(photo from www.turnkeyrc.om)

(photo from www.theoddbods.org)

Sorry about the quality, but you mean like this one?

(image from www.europa1939.com)