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I’d pay good money for a Hawker Typhoon


nick10

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On 10/24/2021 at 1:28 PM, Krupi said:

On top of this you have multiple Sea Furys.

AFAIK all of them running on R2800 engines, though I believe there's a project somewhere to rebuilt a Centaurus engine for one of them.

 

I would love to see them in DCS, Typhoon, Tempest, Sea Fury, and everything, but I'm not sure if that's even feasible for some of them.

"I went into the British Army believing that if you want peace you must prepare for war. I believe now that if you prepare for war, you get war."

-- Major-General Frederick B. Maurice

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I think Hawker Sea Fury T.20 (VX281) was the only Centaurus flying.

"Was" as it has been a very bad few years for the Sea Fury... 

Hawker Sea Fury Mk II NX254SF (Wrote off 2020)
Hawker Sea Fury T.20 WG655 (Wrote off 2020)
Hawker Sea Fury T.20 VX281 (Wrote off 2021)

However the fact that in all these the occupants survived is a testament to the airframe.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The engine was pretty reliable by Normandy.

The Tail was never really fixed, but when you actually look at the number of cases where the tail was known to have detached it is actually pretty low. It wasn't like they were popping off every other flight. 

It was rushed into the front line too quickly, both the airframe and the engine. 

Windows 10 Pro | ASUS RANGER VIII | i5 6600K @ 4.6GHz| MSI RTX 2060 SUPER | 32GB RAM | Corsair H100i | Corsair Carbide 540 | HP Reverb G2 | MFG crosswind Pedals | Custom Spitfire Cockpit

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I thought the Sabre was always difficult to start, particularly in cold weather.
 

Some of the structural failures seem to have been due to airframe stress caused by engine problems. Valve failures would cause cylinder explosions and immediate total engine seizures that would over stress the airframe and the tail would fall off. 
 

It’s always noted how quickly the RAF withdrew the Typhoon once WW2 was over. It’s almost as if operating an aircraft with the Typhhon’s deficiencies was much less acceptable in peacetime than wartime. No Typhoons were sold on to other nations either, even though the UK was desperate for cash.

 

 

 

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With the arrival of the superior Tempest why would you keep them around, a lot of aircraft of all types were scrapped after the war for various reasons.  

The Typhoon was a failed Interceptor but arguably one of the best ground attack aircraft of the time, there wasn't much need for ground attack aircraft in late 1945.

Regarding the tail, in reality only a handful of aircraft actually experienced this issue "In total 25 aircraft were lost and 23 pilots killed due to tail failures".

The main reason for it's mass scrapping was it's bad rap, even after the aircraft was fixed... this was further compounded by the low survival rate of the pilots which was more to do with the extremely dangerous missions that they undertook than the aircraft itself.

Take the Mosquito, a great aircraft... no one mentions the manufacturing issues that led to the demise of quite a few crews.

"In the UK a series of fatal flying accidents among mosquito's of various marks (at the rate of two to four a month from January to June 1944) was attributed to failure of the wing structure." Extract from "The men who flew the  Mosquito" by Martin W. Bowman

That is at least 12 aircraft lost, not including the number that crashed in Asia where De Haviland blamed weather and the debonding of structure. A subsequent investigation actually found this was not the case and aircraft in Europe suffered the same issues due to manufacturing flaws. This was solved by Mod 638, where a small strip of plywood was inserted along the span of the wing to ensure that the wing was properly bonded. 

Regardless my point is that the Typhoon has suffered from initial well deserved criticism (lack of performance, engine and structural issues) however even with these "fixed" the damage was done and the low survival rate as I previously mentioned, due to the missions it was employed on, sealed the fate of what was actually a capable aircraft.

It was simple rushed into service too quickly to counter the Fw 190, if it had more time to develop then the story would be very different as can be seen by the Tempest and Sea Fury.

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16 hours ago, Mogster said:

I thought the Sabre was always difficult to start, particularly in cold weather.
 

Some of the structural failures seem to have been due to airframe stress caused by engine problems. Valve failures would cause cylinder explosions and immediate total engine seizures that would over stress the airframe and the tail would fall off. 
 

It’s always noted how quickly the RAF withdrew the Typhoon once WW2 was over. It’s almost as if operating an aircraft with the Typhhon’s deficiencies was much less acceptable in peacetime than wartime. No Typhoons were sold on to other nations either, even though the UK was desperate for cash.

 

 

 

Also telling other RAF pilots were not so keen to fly it. They were desperate for typhoon pilots around Normandy and asked the spit pilots to volunteer. Nobody did.

partly because of the huge loss rates against flak  

but probably also party because the tiffie had a rep as a difficult beast 


Edited by nick10
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Fun fact: in the 3 months after D Day the Typhoon squadrons claimed precisely 0 air to air victories and all of 1 bandit damaged. Pure ground pounders.

DCS WWII player. I run the mission design team behind 4YA WWII, the most popular DCS World War 2 server.

https://www.ProjectOverlord.co.uk - for 4YA WW2 mission stats, mission information, historical research blogs and more.

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4 hours ago, Skewgear said:

Fun fact: in the 3 months after D Day the Typhoon squadrons claimed precisely 0 air to air victories and all of 1 bandit damaged. Pure ground pounders.


By mid 1944 engaging bandits wasn’t their role though was it, especially while dragging RP rails and bomb racks along. The RAF had some Tempests and clouds of Spitfires that were born for that, especially the small numbers of Spit XIVs.

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Three months after D-Day the luftwaffe had been pretty much beaten back to Germany. 

Now as Mogster already alluded to, the Typhoon were not employed during Operation Overlord as an air supremacy fighter. Typhoon squadrons were used as close air support, the limitations of the Sabre engine meant that they were previously used as a low level deep strike aircraft which isn't where fighting generally took place on the western front.

So the Typhoon in hindsight cannot be regarded as an air combat aircraft, it was a failed interceptor that found a home as a fantastic close ground support platform. This means that they stuck with the army, participating in Cab-Rank missions, unlike the Spitfire, Mustang and Thunderbolt who were employed in air supremacy... So it is hardly surprising that the Typhoon did not in fact have a great number of enemy aircraft to it's name. 

The successor to the Typhoon the Tempest in its relatively short service life garnered an impressive record and was the aircraft that the Typhoon should have been if it hadn't been rushed into service to counter the Fw190. 


Edited by Krupi

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When the Luftwaffe were able to break through in Operation Bodenplatte the Typhoon gave a reasonably good account of itself. 

 

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_20211113_233315.JPG


Edited by Krupi
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The Typhoon didn’t do that bad against enemy fighters. They ended up with 246 kills (Tempests had 239) and a handful of aces (5+ of the kills in the Typh, many more “mixed” types aces), according to Osprey’s “Typhoon and Tempest aces of WWII”. I didn’t calculate their K/D against the Luftwaffe fighters, and don’t recall seeing this number, so it’s difficult to compare to other allied fighters.

The Spit is the better fighter, but that means little when they can’t catch those 190A’s running across the channel.

 


Edited by Bozon

“Mosquitoes fly, but flies don’t Mosquito” :pilotfly:

- Geoffrey de Havilland.

 

... well, he could have said it!

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The tempest mk v would be my top pick for the next dcs ww2 module. It really had some innovative features, spring tabbed ailerons, MUCH better wing design, etc. As a (quite shitty) mechanical engineer I have the greatest respect for those who designed the sabre engine, and its my favourite engine of the war for many reasons. The short stroke in comparison to every other ww2 engine, combined with the relativity low capacity per cylinder, spot on reciprocating and rotational balance thanks to basically being 2 flat engines on top of each other, and the lack of inertia from valve springs/valvetrain made it the highest revving aircraft piston engine. 

Looking at the frankly quite ridiculous ammount of precision required in making the thing during wartime with the problems of metallurgy inherent to sleve valve engines and severe lack of oil quality in those days, its no suprise had problems at the start.

Something I find cool is that it was the only engine from ww2 (from what I know) to make 100hp/l, at least in prototype form.

Plus, we need an actual late war british fighter to go up against the germans since we dont have that yet ;))


Edited by Joe Miller
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