WI: Successful Rolls Royce Vulture
- Thread starter Just Leo
- Start date
Too true, if before the war then no Halifax and no Lancaster, if during early war then no Lancaster (Handley Page turned their two Vulture bomber into a four Merlin one (Halifax) early on).
Also if the Vulture is successful and the Sabre still has its OTL problems then Tornado not Typhoon.
Then there are the knockons.
Ideal Bomber anyone?
The Ideal Bomber is going to be rapidly obsoleted when it becomes clear daylight long-range raids are daft. The Ideal design was supposed to manage unprecedented speed, firepower and armour at the expense of bomb tonnage (like the B-17 only more so) whereas the RAF ended up prioritising bomb load (no autocorrect, not "bumbled" though it surely did that too) in the Manchester/Lancaster/Halifax.
At some point you go to night bombing and the crazy heavy broadside armament is useless, so you take it off, hopefully redesign to put bombs there, and you've got a giant Mosquito on steroids... nice. But incredibly expensive for the damage it can do, so hopefully you find smarter things to do with it than carpet bombing housing estates.
However, someone is going to start thinking about how much HE you can carry to Berlin with four Vultures instead of two. If the Vulture turns out to have anything like the growth potential of the Merlin you could be building the next best thing to a British B-29 in 1944... the Vulture II was rated just shy of 1800hp, the original B-29 2200hp - and the Merlin almost precisely doubled in power over the years 1938-44.
ETA no, it's not going to be as sophisticated as a B-29, not with the same growth potential, probably not the same ceiling. But it'll be big, fast and carry an unholy amount of ordnance.
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Derek Pullem
Donor
What about a British B-36 like the Victory Bomber.
With the additional power could a 4 engine version be considered?
With the additional power could a 4 engine version be considered?
Admiral Beez
Banned
Early success with the Vulture may lead to an earlier availability of a large engines for tanks, meaning Cromwell-sized medium tanks make an early entrance.
Two human factors; first, from the manufacturing and maintenance point of view, to a large extent an engine's an engine; it needs much the same tools and jigs (and people) to make it, the same checks and maintenance done on it, the same paperwork done on it, the same fitters to do it all, large or small- from that point of view, the same horsepower from one large engine is much more efficient than said horsepower from two smaller engines.
Means that you have a much larger bomber force, if they're that much easier to make and look after.
Second, very few bombers ever shot down a night fighter, their armament was heavy only in pounds weight, as killing tools .303 in powered turrets were marginal verging on useless. It was the gunners' eyeballs that were key to survival, spotting for night fighters and telling the pilot when to evade. Without the turrets, what do the eyes out do? The bomb aimer becomes the only spare body for most of the flight.
As far as tanks go, anybody got accurate dimensions for the Vulture? Google turns up nothing definitive, just four sites copying off each other. The ancestral Kestrel gets referenced as 74.6" long, 24.4" wide, 35.6" tall, you could probably double the height more or less, which translates to a package six by four by three feet you have to get under armour, ouch...
Why not just use a Kestrel? It's in the same six hundred horsepower class as the eventual Meteor anyway- and it is available from the late twenties onward. Hmmm.
Means that you have a much larger bomber force, if they're that much easier to make and look after.
Second, very few bombers ever shot down a night fighter, their armament was heavy only in pounds weight, as killing tools .303 in powered turrets were marginal verging on useless. It was the gunners' eyeballs that were key to survival, spotting for night fighters and telling the pilot when to evade. Without the turrets, what do the eyes out do? The bomb aimer becomes the only spare body for most of the flight.
As far as tanks go, anybody got accurate dimensions for the Vulture? Google turns up nothing definitive, just four sites copying off each other. The ancestral Kestrel gets referenced as 74.6" long, 24.4" wide, 35.6" tall, you could probably double the height more or less, which translates to a package six by four by three feet you have to get under armour, ouch...
Why not just use a Kestrel? It's in the same six hundred horsepower class as the eventual Meteor anyway- and it is available from the late twenties onward. Hmmm.
Hello, all,
Lumsden gives for Kestrel, in inches, un-supercharged versions:
-lenght 66.72
-width 24.4
-height 39.4
Supercharged vesions were a bit longer, but also lower by couple of inches. Un-supercharged versions, that was really shame were not procured as tank engines, were making 480 HP in early versions, 560-585 in later ones.
A workable Vulture with 2-stage supercharger (1944, in spirit of this thread?) means 450-470 mph in Tempest airframe.
added: max power for unsupercharged Kestrel is indeed 530-560 for early versions (those used 77 oct, non-lead fuel), evn 600 for the Mk. IB; the later versions, on 87 oct fuel, were topping at 610 HP.
Lumsden gives for Kestrel, in inches, un-supercharged versions:
-lenght 66.72
-width 24.4
-height 39.4
Supercharged vesions were a bit longer, but also lower by couple of inches. Un-supercharged versions, that was really shame were not procured as tank engines, were making 480 HP in early versions, 560-585 in later ones.
A workable Vulture with 2-stage supercharger (1944, in spirit of this thread?) means 450-470 mph in Tempest airframe.
added: max power for unsupercharged Kestrel is indeed 530-560 for early versions (those used 77 oct, non-lead fuel), evn 600 for the Mk. IB; the later versions, on 87 oct fuel, were topping at 610 HP.
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The Hawker enters service more or less on schedule. Less farting about with Merlin's with the Barracuda. In FFO/APOD, the Manchester gets palmed off to the RAAF.
I think there's one Griffon too many. Don't get so excited. It's just a thread. Besides, at that point, nobody cared what the FAA wanted, except the FAA.
Doh, type. Also, I'm not getting excited, simply pointing out that some things simply aren't going to work, and cancelling the Griffon for the Vulture is one of them, though you might be able to get the Vulture in place of the Exe if you can solve its issue.
If the Vulture is less of a disaaster, say a fproblem on the level on the level of the Napier Sabre, the Vulture might inspires the USAAF and/or Allison to place more effort into the development of the awesome Allison V-3420 engine.
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Funny thing. You can't read a blurb about the Exe without it mentioning that it was reliable, and it served for years on a Fairey Battle testbed/runabout, providing increased speed, until 1943. Of course, work on it was terminated almost before it began, because it was requested by the FAA for Barracuda. Really funny is that the larger Pennine seemed to share the same qualities, including a complete lack of interest. They all shared a fairly common crankshaft layout, but only the Vulture was cursed with exploding big ends. And the sleeve-valve X motors were air-cooled. The world wonders.