westlands ww2 fighter projects any info?

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

Hi Jerry,
can you pm me with what you need. i have access to Westlands archives, unfortunately they cannot be access through normal channels!
Dave

Hi Dave
I will PM this weekend, thanks for the offer.:)
Cheers
jerry

Jerry

Nash & Thompson were asked to design the Whirlwind 40mm gun installation because there was a desire to avoid distracting Westland from the high-priority Welkin programme. Three days after Capt Frazer Nash was asked to proceed the project was cancelled because Whirlwind production had finished and there were few left by then. I doubt if much real design actually took place in that short time and certainly nothing was actually built.

Niall

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

Hi All,
Anyone seen any info/drawings/sketches of the westlands fighter projects between the P9 whirlwind and the P14 welkin.

Apparently the P13 was a project with twin merlins in the fuselage.

I don’t need any info on the P-12 ( or should it be PV-12 ) the Delanne tail lysander.
cheers
Jerry

Hi Jerry,
can you pm me with what you need. i have access to Westlands archives, unfortunately they cannot be access through normal channels!
Dave

40mm installation

Jerry

Nash & Thompson were asked to design the Whirlwind 40mm gun installation because there was a desire to avoid distracting Westland from the high-priority Welkin programme. Three days after Capt Frazer Nash was asked to proceed the project was cancelled because Whirlwind production had finished and there were few left by then. I doubt if much real design actually took place in that short time and certainly nothing was actually built.

Niall

westland

Hi Stuart / Steve,
Thanks for the replies, I was drawing blanks also, so thought I might try a posting here, you never know.
Whilst I have a thread going…..
Anyone recall who the contractor was for the 40mm cannon in the whirlind nose was, I know westlands didn’t do the design , I have forgotten and can’t find it in my notes or files ( which i must admitt are a mess since I moved here, must find some spare time…)
I found the info at the PRO/NA I think.
Cheers
Jerry

Jerry.

No pictures…

I checked the book in question – British Secret Projects Fighter & Bombers 1939-1950 By Tony Buttler

Westland P.13
Westlands submitted two proposals. The first was a highly experimental arrangement of typical single-engined layout but in which two Merlin XXs in the nose were coupled in tandem to drive a pair of contra-rotating airscrews through a common gearbox. It carried six 20mm cannon, three in each wing, but was disliked by the Air Staff, partly because of the very poor view for the pilot and also due to some questionable handling qualities for fighting. Time to 20,000ft (6,096m) was estimated to be 9.3minutes and to 30,000ft (9,144m) 16.2minutes, service ceiling 37,000ft (11,278m). It does not appear to have been examined in detail and no drawing has been found. Both Westland designs had the second crewman sitting with his back to the pilot…

Sorry Jerry…

Kew have some drawings of Welkin variants so they might have what you are looking for. I’m going there next month to copy some of the Welkin stuff so I’ll keep an eye out for you.

Best wishes
Steve P

Hi Jerry…

Not promising, but there might be a drawing of it in a book I have on British experimental aircraft…

It’s at home so I will take alook see this evening…

Tried emailing Westlands?

All the best

Stuart