This is my skin of a 609 Squadron Typhoon flown by Squadron Leader Roland Beamont in 1943. Beamont scored 3 kills in France in 1940 and 3 more in the Battle of Britain, all while flying Hurricanes. After a spell as a Hawker test pilot he was posted to 609 Squadron to help develop combat techniques for the Typhoon. A second spell as a Hawker test pilot developing the Tempest was followed by a posting as acting Wing Commander to the first Tempest Wing. Beamont shot down three more aircraft and 36 V-1s post D Day before being downed by flak and spending the rest of the war as a POW. After the war he resumed his test pilot career, developing aircraft like the EE Lightning and Canberra.
The aircraft I'm skinning here is Beamont's 1943 Typhoon Mk Ib. This is a bit different to the 1944 model we have in game. The propeller was 3, not 4 bladed, the tail surfaces were smaller and the cockpit had more framing and a car door entry like a P-39. I asked Pyro and he said early car door style Typhoons are an acceptable substitution for the game. I considered redoing the panel lines to include the car door but it would have looked a bit odd without the canopy framing.
Beamont's aircraft has the black and white ID stripes below the wings which were applied to Typhoons to prevent them being mistaken for FW190s. It also has a yellow chin band and uniquely for a Typhoon, yellow cannon shrouds. The fuselage roundels are a bit larger than standard as well. The lower set of kill markings are locomotives destroyed.
