Chapter CXXXIII: From the Ministry with Venom
Chapter CXXXIII: From the Ministry with Venom
The Monarchist Air Force's demand for a 'modern' monoplane fighter caused a degree of consternation in the Air Ministry, primarily because they were somewhat short on such things themselves. A fair minded observer would say that the Royal Air Force had a grand total of two types available that met such a description; the Supermarine Spitfire and the Hawker Hurricane. The Supermarine factory had only just starting delivering Spitfires to the RAF over the summer of 1937, most of the pilots were still converting across from their previous biplanes and none of the squadrons had been 'stood up' for front line service. More seriously the 'shadow factory' that had been slated to support Supermarine in producing the Spitfire, the vast Castle Bromwich facility, was still a construction site. For as long as that was the case there was no possibility of the Air Staff allowing any Spitfire production to be diverted to Spain, which left the Hurricane as seemingly the only option. With Hawker's main factory working flat out, and having drafted in Westland Aircraft to boost output, there was in theory enough production to allow a modest number to be sent to Spain, however the reality was more complicated. While the government had no serious concerns about exporting the Hurricane airframe to Spain, indeed it's rugged and 'basic' nature made it a good fit for the expected conditions and ground crews to be found in Spain, the engine was a very different matter. The Rolls Royce Merlin was considered one of the Air Ministry's 'crown jewels' and so was up near the very top of the Restricted List. While Hawker were confident that they could re-design the Hurricane to take a new engine, a hurried check confirmed that there was no engine of similar enough size, weight and power available. The least bad option, the Napier Dagger (as used on the export versions of the Handley Page Hampden), had a broadly similar power output but was taller, narrower and, as we have seen, was air-cooled where the Merlin was liquid-cooled. Fitting the Dagger would require the entire front half of the Hurricane fuselage to be re-designed to channel airflow over the engine to keep it cooled, then the radiators would have to be removed and various related sundries removed or relocated. At which point the essentially 'new' design would need to go through flight testing and acceptance trials and, assuming it passed, a new production line setup and started, even rushed this was 6 months work if not nearer a year, an utterly unacceptable timescale for the impatient Monarchists.
A Hurricane of No.73 squadron having it's Merlin III engine removed for routine maintenance by the squadron ground crew at RAF Digby in Lincolnshire. The early marks of the Merlin were not the triumphs of power and reliability the later versions would become, but they were still very much world class engines, easily on a par with their German (Daimler Benz DB-601) and American (Allison V-1710) rivals and markedly superior to the inline efforts of France, Italy or the Soviet Union. This perhaps explains why the Air Ministry was as much concerned about engine design secrets leaking back to Hispano-Suiza in France as the potential for German espionage. It is also worth noting that, aside from the security concerns, there were practical problems with sending the Merlin to Spain, not least the lack of engineers to help train up the Monarchists in servicing and repairing the engine. Rolls Royce were exceptionally busy at this time, in addition to their aero-engine development work they were supporting their nascent Australian branch as it worked up for starting Merlin production in Melbourne and working with the Royal Armoured Corps on tank engines. The fight over which of those should be delayed, or even cancelled, to allow Merlins to be sent to Spain was not one any party relished, which was another persuasive reason to send (almost) any other aero-engine to Spain.
Under pressure to come up with something to send to Spain, if only to ensure the Monarchists didn't get any ideas about buying from someone else, the Air Ministry widened it's search. They soon honed in on the prototypes produced for an earlier design specification, F.5/34, which had called for a single seat, eight gunned fighter designed to catch and intercept fast, high flying bombers. Crucially the aircraft was not intended for use by the home based Metropolitan RAF but was intended for the euphemistic 'Empire service in hot, tropical climates', the government considering it a breach of diplomatic etiquette to blatantly state it was intended for use in the Far East against the Japanese. As a result the specification had called for the use of an air cooled radial engine, the improved reliability and easier maintenance were deemed important for aircraft that would be deployed at the end of a very long supply chain. The Air Ministry was attracted to this feature of the specification, it meant none of the designs used the Merlin so they hoped there would be no concerns about exporting advanced engine technology to Spain. Technically they were correct in this, but unfortunately instead of export concerns they instead found a whole new set of domestic engine related problems to complicate the issue.
The F.5/34 specification had been on the cusp of cancellation after the Abyssinian War and the subsequent Imperial Defence Conference. The success of the hastily 'desertified' Hurricanes in North Africa had convinced the Air Staff that a special 'hot climate' fighter was not required for technical reasons and the maintenance and logistics staff were becoming vocal in the keen desire to keep the number of types in service to a minimum. The subsequent decision to base Hurricanes to Singapore had removed the final raison d'être of the specification; building permanent RAF fighter bases, and their associated warehouses and workshops, meant complex engines could be supported in the Far East. In the medium term the situation would only improve as Australian production of both the Hurricane and the Merlin engine would provide a 'local' supply of replacement parts and aircraft to any Far Eastern squadrons. The RAF duly withdrew their interest in the specification and ordinarily that would have meant it was cancelled, but then the Admiralty intervened and the programme was saved by the Fleet Air Arm, the 5th Sea Lord and his staff being interested in the designs for their own reasons. As we have seen, the Royal Navy had two brand new but 'obsolete' biplane aircraft coming into service (the Gloster Sea Gladiator and the Fairey Swordfish) but only one aircraft development budget agreed with the Treasury (the funding from for the Blackburn Skua programme, which would be 'rolled over' once the Skua entered production). The F.5/34 prototypes offered a way to solve the dilemma of which replacement to fund first, if the FAA 'borrowed' the results of the RAF specification then they could get a monoplane fighter into service on the cheap and put the development funds towards the Swordfish replacement. What made the prototypes particularly attractive to the FAA were their air-cooled radial engines and emphasis on ease of maintenance, both features that the FAA had decided were vital in carrier aircraft. The small size of the prototypes, allowing them to fit on the lifts of the older carriers and be packed away in large numbers in the hangars, was just a bonus. There was a degree of irony in the newly independent FAA choosing to revert to the 'bad old days' practice of accepting the RAF's cast-offs, but such are the ways of defence procurement.
While four designs had been submitted under the F.5/34 specification, the FAA were quick to dispose of two of them as being too far from entering service; the Bristol Type 146 prototype wasn't scheduled to fly until early 1938, while Martin-Baker were even further behind and their MB-2 wasn't expected to emerge till the summer of that year. Interestingly the MB-2 would still manage to stagger on, the Air Ministry directly funding a prototype against a brand new, purpose written, specification. While the MB-2 had many clever features and details it was not exactly a cutting edge design, as an example the initial proposal drawings showed a fixed under-carriage, so it's survival was as much due to concerns in the Air Ministry about the lack of competition in fighter design as the potential of the aircraft. Bristol's Type 146 would not be so fortunate and the prototype would never be finished, in a sign of the return to more 'normal' priorities the team's designer and engineers would be split between working on the Type 153 cannon fighter and the Type 143 airliner project. The Air Ministry agreed with the FAAs judgement on those rejections (in private at least) and so concentrated on the two survivors the Vickers Venom and the Gloster F.5/34. The difference in designation should not be over-analysed, they reflected neither progress or preference but instead Gloster's habit of not naming an aircraft until it had actually been ordered and the Vickers' approach of giving their designs names early on to make them stand out.
The Bristol Type 143 'Blackpool', the civilian airliner version of the Blenheim bomber. After languishing during the Abyssinian War the Type 143 would become one of the post-war priorities for the Air Ministry and so for Bristol. A great deal of 'encouragement' was applied to the Bristol board by the government and they duly gave the Type 143 the same more powerful Perseus engines as the Blenheim (hammering another nail into the coffin of the Aquila engine), named it the Blackpool and launched it onto the civilian market. The design team were then further 'encouraged' to look at a stretched version that could take advantage of the extra power of the Perseus to add payload and range. Quite aside from the usual desire to keep work flowing to factories that had been busy with emergency war-orders, there was a bigger picture priority. The government was very keen to see Empire airlines flying Empire (British) aircraft not foreign imports, the Blackpool was one of the first tangible outputs of this policy.
The Gloster design was very much the FAA favourite, partly because Gloster was the more experienced carrier aircraft designer but mostly because the design had been at the perfect stage when the time of the FAA taking over the specification. While the Vickers prototype was flying and the rest were still drawings Gloster were just producing the full scale mockup. This made it relatively straightforward for the engineers to 'navalise' the design (adding a catapult point, arrestor hook, folding wings, naval radios, etc) with minimal interruption to the programme. These modifications added weight to an aircraft that had only been projected to have average performance to start with, however we now come to the trump card as far as the FAA were concerned. Originally designed around the Bristol Mercury engine, for the prototype this was swapped out for it's more powerful sleeve-valved twin the Perseus. Aside from adding ~100hp extra power, more than enough to over-come the extra weight of the naval aviation equipment, this change meant it shared an engine with the fleet's new dive bomber, the Blackburn Skua, a very real plus given the limited workshop space on most of the carriers and the desire to expand air groups as far as possible. The prototype first flew in the summer of 1937 and proved to have performance broadly equivalent to the RAF's new fighters; a ~320mph top speed, excellent climb performance and a gratifyingly short take off and landing requirement. This was enough to cement the Gloster as the favourite, while the Venom would go through navalisation the Fifth Sea Lord was clear this was only a backup against something catastrophic emerging during acceptance trials or deck landing testing of the Gloster design, provisionally named the Griffon. In contrast the Air Ministry soon became convinced that the Vickers Venom was the best option to send to Spain. The prototype had been flying since the previous summer and had been thoroughly tested at full war load, demonstrating comparable performance to the prototype Hurricane, giving away a shade in top speed and climb while being slightly more manoeuvrable. Certainly it had far less long term potential than the Hurricane, or even the Gloster Griffon, but for a fighter that would be in combat the moment it arrived in Spain that was not a serious issue, especially compared to it's main attraction; it was ready to go into production immediately.
Sadly for the civil servants at the Air Ministry two problems soon cropped up; the thorny question of who would build it and the perennial concern of engines. To deal with the latter, the Venom was designed around the Bristol Aquila, an engine the Ministry had spent the previous months diligently trying to kill off. To be blunt the Aquila was just too small, at 'only' 15.6 litre displacement it could never produce the 1000hp+ power levels the Air Ministry expected future aircraft required while being too complex (and expensive) for the trainer market. Sleeve valve radials were hard to make, requiring specialist machine tools and operatives that were constantly in short supply, so the Air Ministry had no intention of allowing Bristol to waste precious effort on an engine with no future. The production issue was similar, Vickers were heavily committed to delivering the ordered Wellesley bombers and developing the Wellington, with any spare effort supporting work on the Spitfire (Supermarine being a subsidiary of the vast Vickers-Armstrong group). None of those were considered cancellable or indeed delay-able, the Spitfire was deemed a very high priority for home defence and the Wellington was the lynchpin of the aero-industrial plans of the entire Empire, having been promised to the RAF, RCAF and RAAF with licence production planned for both Australia and Canada.
The Vickers Venom, it's squared off, constant chord wings and the sharp angles of it's polyhedral metal stressed-skinned body clearly visible. The Venom was the final evolution of the Vickers Jockey, a late 1920s 'interceptor fighter' design that had proved ahead of it's time when it lost out to a pair of biplanes; the Hawker Fury and Bristol Bulldog. Since then Vickers had refined the design, finally ditching the Wibault corrugated skin construction for a modern, all-metal, semi-monocoque fuselage, adding details like a retractable under-carriage and a proper canopy to the cockpit and crucially upgrading the engine to the latest sleeve-valve Bristol Aquila. This was connected to the Venom's most unique feature, the engine mounting was hinged at the end of the cowling, allowing it to swing sideways to provide quick access to the rear of the engine and all the ancillaries.
The solution the Ministry found was elegant, though had they been aware of the problems it would cause down the line they may have been less keen to embrace it. There was an alternate engine available and a manufacturer who had the capacity and was familiar with the engine and stressed-skin metal construction. The manufacturer was Airspeed Ltd, one of the smaller but up-and-coming manufacturers, who had established a solid reputation for airliners and trainers but had never cracked the military market. The engine was the Wolseley Libra, a nine cylinder radial like the Aquila, of similar weight and dimensions but lacking the sleeve valves and so marginally down on power. The Wolseley Aero Engine company was mostly notable for being the personal property of Lord Nuffield who, having acquired extensive War Office contracts through Morris and Nuffield Mechanizations, intended to expand and starting winning work from the Air Ministry. Airspeed and Wolsely had an established partnership and Airspeed already considered the Libra and the Aquila to be essentially interchangeable in their own designs. Vickers reluctantly bowed to pressure and sub-contracted the re-engine design work and manufacture of the 'Spanish Venom' to Airspeed, with a handful of the Venom's designers seconded across to assist the process. Airspeed's recently constructed Portsmouth factory made a maximum effort and managed to get the first production aircraft to Spain in time for the climax of the La Coruna offensive.
The Monarchists were initially somewhat nonplussed by the Venom, they had expected at least Hurricanes and the more dementedly optimistic had hoped for Spitfires. Receiving an aircraft they had never heard of and that the RAF wasn't using did not go down well, had the British not offered the first batch on free trial (and the situation above La Coruna not been so desperate) it is likely they would have been rejected out of hand. Once the Monarchists pilots got their hands on them however, the objections melted away as fast as the Basque airforce. While the Libra engine meant it could only achieve a shade over 300mph that was still over 120mph faster than the Basque's Bulldogs and Corsairs, this advantage along with the Venoms excellent manoeuvrability and heavy (for Spain) firepower of 8x 0.303' machine guns had predictably devastating results. The advantages over the Soviet supplied aircraft were not so pronounced but still decisive; the Venom was the first Monarchist aircraft that could reliably intercept the previously uncatchable Tupolev SB bombers and had a 20mph speed advantage over the Soviet I-16s, as well as four times the firepower and wings that could manage high-g turns without snapping off. It is far to say that the Spanish Venom was very much a hit with the Monarchists, to the relief of the British government in general and the Air Ministry in particular. This just left the minor issue of dealing with all the problems it's birth had created in the British aero-industry and the consequences of breaking 'The Ring'.
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Notes:
First off, fans and members of the old UK Co-op AAR may recognise the Gloster Griffon, because it remains a good idea.
In Butterfly the land based Gladiator got cancelled during Churchill's cull of the biplanes so Gloster had more time, part of that they used to fit folding wings to the Sea Gladiator (which was FAA so not affected by the cull) and the rest they used to work on F.5/34 which, even after being navalised, is still 6months ahead of OTL and probably going to end up in the next generation of CAGs on RN carriers.In OTL Hawker did produce plans to re-engine the Hurricane with a whole range of different engines, primarily because the Merlin was in such demand everywhere it was becoming a bottleneck to production. It came to nothing because the amount of design and testing work involved was considerable and the efforts better spent on the Hurricane replacements that Hawker were working on. On a related point in OTL Westland were building the entirely nondescript Hawker Hector, a biplane army co-operation aircraft that soon got phased out, as that also got killed by Churchill that freed up Westland to help with the Hurricane. Let no-one say these things aren't thought through.
Onto the meat of this, the F.5/34 specification. In OTL this lingered on for quite a while, certainly long enough to get all the prototypes flying, in part this is because in OTL the Spitfire and Hurricane weren't rushed into service so a 'backup' design was more justifiable. Here it gets killed by the RAF early, but saved by an FAA looking for a fighter. The Martin-Baker MB-2 was interesting if flawed, but would lead to some much better aircraft, not least the superlative MB-5, so as stated the Air Ministry are funding the designer as much as the aircraft.
For the avoidance of doubt, yes a Sea Hurricane would probably be a better choice for the FAA and was discussed in OTL as early as 1937. But where would things be without cockups and pointless institutional politics getting in the way? Besides the Gloster effort is not without it's advantages and I've had the FAA make the big leap to accept a single seat fighter, so they had to get a few things 'wrong'.
The Bristol Blackpool is new(ish). A Type 143 prototype civilian airliner was created and it flew around attracting admiring glances, but it never got the newest Bristol engines and Bristol and the Air Ministry were too focused on re-armament and bombers to push a civilian airliner. Here it is being re-engined with some Perseus', tided up a bit and pointed at the Empire and wider world airliner market. It will do well and not just because of government pressure for Empire airlines to buy it, it will beat the Lockheed Electra/Super-Electra to the market and is faster and more fuel efficient as well. It's no DC-3 (too small for starters) but so much of the DC-3's reputation and dominance rests on the thousands of ex-military models that were dumped on the civil market post-war, besides there are other designs aimed at that bit of the market, more of which later.
OTL Wolsley did make the Libra engine and it got bench tested and type approved at about the right sort of power but never flew. This is because Nuffield realised he was getting nowhere with the Air Ministry and so abandoned aero-engine making in late 1936 before selling the factory and plans to Scottish Engineering mid-37 (who appear to have mostly disappeared). Lord Nuffield is something of a bete noir of the British war effort, his main contribution was really cocking up running the Castle Bromwich Spitfire Factory and producing the Nuffield Liberty engine which cursed many an otherwise innocent tank. More on all this in the next chapter though.
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