I recall that a couple were used briefly for some NF trials in the immediate postwar period but that was short lived and all were scrapped in fairly short order.

Not such short order.. this record from 1959 probably explains the fire dump ‘sightings’ of ‘G-AGOI’… (originally posted elsewhere by Mark12):

[ATTACH=CONFIG]236604[/ATTACH]

You will be rewarded with some 3D40 or 3D50 hubs, all in good time, though I can’t help you with Peregrines ! Maybe early single stage Merlins, but then we still need to find a SBAC spline spider X 2 . Might need to machine those ones up from new….

I like the idea of Merlins. That and a million quid and we’ll end the ‘Whirlwind with Merlins’ debate one way or the other for ever!

Seriously, if you have those hubs lots of people would be eternally grateful – many, many beers in it.

That is quite fascinating information! Thank you for that, AA 🙂 So that’s pretty conclusive, you can re-use Hydromatic blades on C/W hubs and make the result flyable. Nice!!

Interesting that CAC – by shaving the inboard trailing edge – essentially designed a whole new blade, 28-44002-3. I am interested in how that would play now. Keeping Lancasters et al flying might be made a little easier if it were possible to just trim a set of existing blades to fit the flight regime. That this was done at all, rather than buy ‘off the shelf’ shows the critical nature of profile design sometimes. Thinking about it, a set of blades designed to efficiently move a light Lancaster at relatively slow speeds and revs might actually look different to a 6519..

I declare an interest 😉 … but the Whirlwind wasn’t modest, performance wise – except for altitude. At moderate altitudes it was seriously fast for its time, and highly agile. It might be that a dislike for Westland senior staff, and Petter in particular, coloured some opinions. This disfavour would not alter what test pilots scribbled on their notepads, though. They were not Soviet 😉

To repeat (apologies to those who have heard this too often – I expect some eyes are rolling faster than a 190) the Whirlwind was designed around an end-of-the-development-line engine – that is what killed it. There was nothing modestly-performing about it. Some writers who should have known better lazily repeated this dubious non-fact many years ago, and completely failed to ask the pilots who flew it or even check the figures in date context.

Back to the Welkin, it was never designed to dogfight, any more than, say, a U2 was. It was designed to take on high-flying bombers at the edge of their own performance. Roll rate at 10,000ft was not the issue.

Magnesium and aluminium alloys. The magnesium was unusual – bit of a ‘Westland’ thing at the time. The wing’s t/c ratio would decrease as one travelled outboard. 21% would be the absolute thickest section. Having said that it is very thick for the time, and that would have limited the speed greatly.

In the words of Marvin.. depressing, isn’t it?

Just too long spent exploring the darkest recesses of the internet when I should be working! The report was July 43, the data will have been gathered earlier, of course..

Hi Tonk

Yes, with DH the thousand series was strictly about the shank. The number immediately following this was (usually) your drawing (profile) number (within that series). I am working on whether in fact that number relates to something about the profile, rather than just being sequential. The reason for this hunch is that the Spit’s 55409 and the WW’s 54409 look so similar.

Re Hamilton equivalents – here are some specific BLADE PROFILE commonalities from the tables:

Brackets 6105 and 6249 the same profile as Hydro 6153 and 6229
Bracket 6127 the same profile as Hydro 6185 (and very possibly DH 54400)
Brackets 6095, 6167 and 6237 same as Hydro 6181
Bracket 6101 (very common) same as Hydro 6183 (and very possibly the DH used on the Blenheim)
Brackets 6103 and 6111 same as Hydro 6139
Bracket 6165 same as Hydro 6239
Brackets 6227 and 6157 same as Hydro 6247 and 6179

Further, Hydros 6155 and 6159 were the same, as were 6187 and 6189.

That was the situation as of 1941. Stay tuned.