Whirlwind and Welkin

[dodgy-alan 1,587]

The Westland Whirlwind was on paper a high performance fighter, It's top speed was 360mph and it had a design service ceiling of 30'000ft. in practice it's Rolls Royce Peregrine engines were plagued with problems and in the event only one squadron (No 263)used the aircraft, mainly for low level fighter-bomber ops, it only had a short service life as the Hurricane and then the Typhoon could do exactly the same job but far more efficiently. In air to air combat it's large size was a drawback aginst nimbler single engined aircraft. Only a 112 were built against the original order for 2 batches of 200.Later the design was evolved into a Merlin powered, high altitude fighter called the Welkin and although it was a good aircraft it arrived too late to have any purpose (as the high altitude threat had gone) and so remained an also ran, just a few aircraft being used as test beds and engineering training airframes.

Whirlwind

Welkin

thanks for viewing

[ShrewsburyFC 215]

Nice! I love the first shot!

[UKJim 502]

God you bin busy - this is the 3rd topic of yours I've clicked in Good work Alan

[hurricanemk1c 195]

Great shots as always Alan, but a slight inaccurancy - 137 Sqn also used the aircraft

[rosariomanzo 545]

Nice shots of a great aircraft

[brett 2,316]

Very nice, The Welkin has almost a more modern attack aircraft look to the front of it, if you put jet engines on it.