Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aircraft and Vehicles => Topic started by: arkaler on September 03, 2004, 09:05:25 AM
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I'm wondering if anyone is interested in having this aircraft modeled in AH.
I'm sure this question has been brought up before, and perhaps beaten to death in another thread, so if it has, I apologize in advance (try not to flame me too much).
I've never seen it modeled in a sim. The four 20mm cannon would make it an effective bomber killer. Although it had short range, it was supposed to have pretty good high altitude capability, but the gross unreliability of the Peregrine engines made this a big problem, and the high landing speeds made it hard to operate out of small fields.
As with some other aircraft I can think of, this aircraft should do well in AH because most of the REAL LIFE problems with quality control and engine reliability would be a non-issue and the aircraft should perform as advertised because the DESIGN was pretty sound.
As a matter of fact, an upgraded version was manufactured with the Merlin engine eventually and called the Welkin, but by that time, the Mosquito and the Beaufighter was on line and there was no longer a need for the Westland.
Any thoughts?
Arkaler
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Although I'd love to see it, the Whirlwind only saw service with two sqaudrons and there weren't many of them built either. It was effectively replaced by the Typhoon.
I'd sooner see a Beaufort or Beaufighter instead if we're asking for a RAF aircraft.
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Definately the Whirlwind with no engine trouble could have some life in AH.
A nimble little twin with a nasty punch, also to be used in scenarios (early 1941)
However I secont Replicant on the Beafighter, - definately a plane who would see use in AH, especially the naval side.
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Why do you think that either the Whirlwind or Beaufighter will see use in AH?
They are both exclusively scenario and CT aircraft.
The Mosquito, which replaced the Beaufighter, gets less than 4,000 kills a tour despite being a far more survivable and capable aircraft.
That isn't to say that they don't have a place in AH, just that statements like "definately a plane who would see use in AH" are a false hope.
I would also favor the Beaufighter over the Whirlwind due to their relative historical roles.
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is that the 4 gunned ostwind?
if so he11 yes we need it!!
would be a "blast" hehehehe
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JB73,
No, it is an early war British twin engined fighter with four 20mm Hispano Mk I cannon in the nose.
You're thinking of the Wirbelwind. German spelling vs English spelling.
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Well, I wouldn't want to endorse a plane that would end up being a 'Hangar Queen', and I aknowlege that there are other more prolific and deserving aircraft to be modeled, but to be fair, I've been reading some posts on this aircraft since I opened this topic and I notice that the logic goes something like this:
1. We should model other aircraft first.
Well, I guess you can say that for an indefinite period of time until you run out of other aircraft and then maybe we'll get to it eventually. If this is a plane that other people don't like for a specific reason, other than it wasn't very common, I think we should explore that.
2. It wouldn't see much use except in scenarios or wouldn't survive in the MA.
Lots of aircraft already modeled kind of fit that description already. Air combat is a brutally Darwinian environment as we all know. I'm curious how this plane would fare if it's well-known technical problems had been ironed out. Again it's not a BAD design so much as it was plagued with technical problems at a time when they were short on Merlin Engines and didn't have the time to devote to remedying the problems.
In short, I sort of see the Whirlwind as the 'RAF Fighter that might have been great' if things had technically and politically worked out differently.
I think HoHun really brought that point out well in his post nearly 3 years ago.
Regards,
Arkaler
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We have many hangar Queens, and I belive that neither the Whirlwind nor the Beau would be the head Queens.
The Wirlwind was supposedly a delight in the air, about as fast as a 109E, with 4 Hizookas. Hmmm.
People ask for the P38F, would like to know how it stacks against the Whirlwind......
It's also a 300 mph + plane........
But I'd vote for the Beau though if it came to it. :)
The Beau would be the only Torp carrying plane with some survivability, i.e. a nose Hizooka pack AND rockets for more strikes. A very good plane in the anti Shipping role.
Torpedo+Cannons+Rockets=Nothing in AH yet.
Top speed like 310-320 Mph anyway, is sort of ok....
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Well, heck, has anyone TRIED to carry a torp on a Whirlwind?:confused:
OK, I'm just kidding....:D
The Luftwobbles would complain, but maybe they could get the FW Falke and that would sort of even things out.:aok
Arkaler
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Angus,
Mossie has four Hispanos in the nose, with nearly three times the ammo per gun, and is even faster than the Whirwind and yet sees no use.
The Beaufighter is slower than the Ki-67 is what you are saying. The Mossie is faster at SL than the Beau is at it's best altitude. At SL the Beau probably tops out at 270-280mph and to drop a torp in AH you need to be at <50ft and <125mph which would make any aircraft a sitting duck. Torps are also more or less useless as currently handled in AH. No plane will be usefull solely due to torp capability.
Hangar queens both.
That said the Beau would be very useful for scenarios and CT setups.
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Mike Williams (MW) has some Beaufighter tests online at http://home.epix.net/~cap14/el290.html
The TF X, carrying a torp, did 297 mph at 200 ft. The VI, with engines rated at 7 lbs, did just over 300 mph at sea level.
With the increased rating of the Hercules, the Beaufighter could probably do around 310 at sea level in 1943 condition.
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Now that would not be such a hangar queen...
Anyway, the mossie has some flaws in AH, such as non-ruggedness and the new funny spin. It's fast allright, but suffers in the ground attack role.
I'm positive the Beau would be used nicely in things like PT/LVT busting.
And for Scenarios it's a must!
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So the Whirlwind's a NO GO, right?
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Originally posted by Angus
Now that would not be such a hangar queen...
Anyway, the mossie has some flaws in AH, such as non-ruggedness and the new funny spin. It's fast allright, but suffers in the ground attack role.
I'm positive the Beau would be used nicely in things like PT/LVT busting.
And for Scenarios it's a must!
Plus if they did the Mk.21 instead of the TF.X then you'd have 4 x 20mm plus 4 x .50cal which would be a lot more powerful than what the Mosquito has. (standard Beaufighter TF.X has 4 x 20mm & 6 x .303)
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Originally posted by arkaler
I've never seen it modeled in a sim. The four 20mm cannon would make it an effective bomber killer. Although it had short range, it was supposed to have pretty good high altitude capability, but the gross unreliability of the Peregrine engines made this a big problem, and the high landing speeds made it hard to operate out of small fields.
As with some other aircraft I can think of, this aircraft should do well in AH because most of the REAL LIFE problems with quality control and engine reliability would be a non-issue and the aircraft should perform as advertised because the DESIGN was pretty sound.
As a matter of fact, an upgraded version was manufactured with the Merlin engine eventually and called the Welkin, but by that time, the Mosquito and the Beaufighter was on line and there was no longer a need for the Westland.
Any thoughts?
Arkaler
A few thoughts....
Westland's Whirlwind would be of little use. It is 28 mph slower than the Mosquito FB.IV that we already have. Climb rate was horrible (well below 2k/min from sea level). In short, it would be little more than target practice for any fighter that came upon it. You could shoot up bombers, but it would take forever to climb high enough to reach them. You could use it for attack missions or attacking ground vehicles, but the Mossy is considerably superior at this already.
Someone mentioned the P-38F. In comparison to the P-38F, the Whirlwind is badly over-matched. The Whirlwind is about 40 mph slower, only offers 1/2 the rate of climb and acceleration.
As to the Welkin, it was not a success and had little in common with the Whirlwind (completely different airframes) other than some family resemblence. None saw service.
Either a later version of the Mossy or the Beaufighter would be preferable.
My regards,
Widewing
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Whirlwind= 300 mph + right?
4 Hizookas, right?
I've heard it was both a good turning and rolling plane, but I'd like to have some more info about it.
Wingloading? Power? Weight.
Anyway, what Widewing said:
"Either a later version of the Mossy or the Beaufighter would be preferable. "
I'll definately agree with ;)
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Originally posted by JB73
is that the 4 gunned ostwind?
if so he11 yes we need it!!
would be a "blast" hehehehe
No JB, he's talking about another A/C
This is the Wirbelwind................... .......Beautiful
(http://www.jagdtiger.de/GermanTanks/Wirbelwind-02.jpg)
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Originally posted by JB73
is that the 4 gunned ostwind?
if so he11 yes we need it!!
would be a "blast" hehehehe
This is an Ostwind
(http://www.wargamer.com/Hosted/Panzer/flak09.jpg)
(http://www.wargamer.com/Hosted/Panzer/flak08.jpg)
Notice that it only has a single 37mm .
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Whirlwind Update
Been doing a bit of scanning around and I have found another Sim that models the Whirlwind. I just read a review on this bird and the writer confirms a lot of data that is currently available about the plane.
The pictures are very nice. Eye Candy!
http://www.flightsim.com/cgi/kds?$=main/review/whirl.htm
With regard to the performance, I was basically wondering how much of it was due to the unreliabilty of the engine as opposed to the design limitation of the Engine - Airframe combination?
From reading the history of Rolls Royce Aircraft Engine development, I see that they had a number of engine in development.
I gather that the Peregrine was a developement and a hoped for replacement of the V-12 Kestrel Engine, which had powered a lot of the 1930's British Fighters. I suspect that the chaps at Rolls Royce, in an attempt to make an engine that perfromed as specified for the requirements of this new fighter, developed a powerplant that was 'overblown' , which is to say that it was red-lining at maximum rated power. You can expect some catastrophic failures when this happens.
The Supermarine R Engine that powered the Sea-racing plane, was to be developed into a 1500HP engine, since it was originally a developement of the Buzzard, which powered flying boats.
Then there was the S6 engine which eventually was developed into the Griffon engine.
This left a power gap in engine develpoment and the Merlin was developed as an interim powered engine to fulfill the power range from 700HP - 1500HP. It started as a private venture, the PV-12, because there was no money allocated for it's development. It was originally designed with an inovative evaporative cooling system and was first placed in the Hawker Hart. When the merits of the evaporative cooling system became suspect and supplies of Ethylene Glycol from America (Prestone) became available, the cooling system was redesigned.
In 1936 the Airministry called for designs of 2 new monoplane single engine fighters and both Supermarine and Hawker designed them around the PV-12 Engine, largely because they were available, not committed to other projects and fell within the design specifications. Once the 2 prototypes
were ready, the PV-12 was moved to the front burner of engine developement.
The Merlin had it's own reliability problems, and the Rolls Royce company developed a program to address this, by basically pulling engines at random from the line, and running them full tilt until they broke, then disassembling them, finding the parts that failed, and redesigning them. This method proved successful and eventually the Merlin became a very dependable engine.
Interestingly, the Vulture engine was 2 Peregrines bolted together at the base and sharing a common crankshaft. As you can well imagine, bolting 2 troublesome engines together did not fix the problem, but compounded it. 2 aircraft in development, the Hawker Tornado and the Avro Manchester bomber were cancelled because they were based on this powerplpant. These 2 aircraft lived on in other incarnations as the Hawker Typhoon and Temest (with the replacement of the engine with the Napier Sabre engine and the Avro Lancaster ( with a Merlin engine ).
This reprieve almost happened with the Whirlwind, when the need for a high altitude interceptor became apparent. The Welkin was developed around 2 Merlins and performed pretty well, but the Luftwaffe abandoned very high altitude bombing and the need evaporated. As a testbed, it was valuable for the developement of the pressurized cockpit.
So, in conclusion, the Whirlwind was unreliable, short ranged, low ammo load, high landing speed, poor time to altitude statistics and not manueverable enough. The Welkin with iit's thick wing and low Mach number was 'too little, too late'.
Ah, well, it's kind of pretty to look at anyway.
Regards,
Arkaler
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The link I posted doesn't work if you click it, but if you cut and paste it to your webbrowser box, it will take you there.
Nice pictures
Arkaler
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OK,
Here's another link.
http://secure.simmarket.com/product_info.php?products_id=809
I'm not plugging this sim, I just like the pictures.
No flames please.
Arkaler
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Whoaaaa, never realized that the Whirlwind looked that mean!
Really wonder abot dive and roll rate. Anybody???
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Ever seen the flaps on the Whirlwind? Go and check them out, quite different!
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Again,
I'm not sure what the corrected stats on the Whirlwind would be if the engines functioned according to specs without the failures or problems, but I would submit that there are other aircraft that we have already that did not function well in real life because of shortages, quality control issues, maintanence issues, etc.
And as to being outclassed, so are many other fighters and bombers that we have already. Are we only going to introduce uber planes from here on in?
Should we remove the P-40 because it was obsolete? What about the gamers that would like to see the Brewster Buffalo modeled? It served with distinction but noone wants it because it would get slaughtered in the MA. But the Finns used it with great effect against the Russian (after they pulled out the armor plate and a lot of other stuff they didn't need or want)
The Whirlwind is perhaps not a very competitive dogfighter, but it would be an excellent bomber killer. The reviewer recommends that we attack bombers using the same technique that the Flying Tigers used. Blast and dive away. The Whirlwind would be very suited to this with the central firing cannon with no convergence issues. That concentrated fire power in a central location....I suspect that you wouldn't really need to hose those guns for more than a 2 second burst. A quick pass and sharp smack with some cannon and you're pulling away and past the bomber. Sounds workable to me.
So who would be interested and seeing this plane modeled?
It DID serve, it WAS used, and had Rolls Royce put as much effort into fixing the Peregrine as it did the Merlin by running the Heck out of them and taking them apart and finding out what broke and making it better, this plane might have served with some distinction.
Arkaler
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Originally posted by Replicant
Ever seen the flaps on the Whirlwind? Go and check them out, quite different!
And those flaps were the main reason the engines overheated. When down, they blanked the exit from the radiators.(according to some)