Wish l had seen that.

Funny, the spinner question was asked recently about the Fairey Battle.

The Skyraider never used a prop spinner across the many variants, which seemed fairly standard across US Navy carrier types, especially the heavier medium-performance types such as the Avenger, even the high-performance fighters such as the Corsair, Hellcat, Fireball, Tigercat & Bearcat didn’t have spinners fitted.
I can only think that the advantages of saving weight, more airflow through the engine, and having quick maintenance access to the prop hub was more important than any aerodynamic advantage given by having a spinner attached.

Gannets didn’t operate in pairs as they, along with the Tracker combined the hunter and the killer roles into one airframe. They were the first examples of this for both the Royal Navy and US Navy, as well as becoming standard across NATO and western Navies.
Fairey had been working on a combined carrier based radar picket and sub striker since the mid 1940s when it was found that existing types were too small and short ranged to lift the newer more effective radar and the weapons – something that the long-range land based types were becoming quite successful at.
The new type would have to be twin engined and be capacious, for the range, power, and weapons uplift requirements, hence why Fairey went down the double engined route.

My understanding is that the Guardian came about as a compromise because Grumman couldn’t come up with a single airframe to house all the kit, especially the large ANS-20 radar, particularly in the time frame required. They would later develop the outstanding Tracker but that, and the Gannet were still a long way off service entry.

My understanding is that as radar equiped sub hunters came along, such as to the Swordfish III, later Avengers and Fireflys etc that they were operated in groups with the radar picket providing information to the strike aircraft, they did have the smaller (and just effective) pod mounted radars.

Why do you see pics of pairs of Guardians, possibly because they were designed in that siamese way they were shown off as such, I would think a pair was sufficient for pinpointing and attacking one sub, but more substantial battles would require a radar picket and several strike aircraft.

Sorry, yes it does. I was thinking of the door that sits about head height to the Flt Eng, signal cartridges is it? Anyhow it’s wrong for that as well.

Now thinking that it might be the access door for the aileron ground lock on the aft face of the rear spar?

K was the Percival part number identifyer (for that period at least), 56 is the Provost type no, ie Percival P.56 Provost.
Having got severely grazed knuckles from removing and refitting Pembroke (P.66) pedals, I would say they are very similar, if not the same as yours.
They look odd without the distinctive adjusting mechanism mind!

Well done Tim, hope you enjoy your tea at No 10!

Actually Rob you aren’t far off the truth, the Roc (not Rock Baz, named after the mythical bird which helped sea men) was designed to an observation specification, given away by the O in O.30/35! The idea was to also provide carrier defence against large recce or attack aircraft, which at the time were slower than fleet defence types.

My understanding is that Boulton Paul produced the Blackburn Roc as their own ‘Sea’ Defiant (P.85), designed to the same spec had been turned down.

The Air Ministrys’ and Air Councils pre-occupation with turret fighter/defence aircraft such as the Hotspur, Defiant and Roc can be difficult to understand now, but there were foundations for the concept in the expansion era.

Could it be to do with the propeller rather than the engine?

Battles seemed to use bob weighted DH/Hamilton types like the Blenheim, Hampden, and Wellesley which also didn’t use spinners, though the last two did sometimes use small nose type spinners.

Didn’t most RR Merlin applications use Rotol props?
I wonder if the DH props had operating issues with spinners attached?