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Radial Engine Hurricane?


Don McIntyre

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Recently, while reading an old issue of Wings of Fame magazine they made a passing reference to trials being conducted on the Hurricane (a Mk.I in this case) with a Bristol Hercules engine. If someone had posted this online, I'd have said they were a bit daft, but WoF always seemed a pretty reliable source to me. Has anyone seen photos or drawings of said installation? I'm merely compelled by curiosity, I can't see myself doing such a conversion, but I'd like to see an illustration of the project.

 

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42 minutes ago, Graham Boak said:

It was a project, but did not progress to acceptance, build and flight.  I believe it is illustrated in at least one of Mason's Hurricane books - i don't have them handy to check which.

 

The Hawker Hurricane by F. K. Mason and Hurricane by Edward Bishop includes a 3-view of the Hercules Hurricane along with other projects.

0000172.jpg

Jun in Tokyo

https://www.flickr.com/photos/horaburo/albums

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My understanding is that it post-dates the Typhoon project, being intended as a dedicated fighter-bomber after the Hurricane had been recognised as not having the development potential to go further forward as a pure fighter.  It certainly seems to have been a minimum-change design with little attention paid to a low-drag installation of a radial engine: as the Tempest Mk.II shows, Hawker were to learn a lot from the Fw190!

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As Graham says; it was on paper. Anything I have only refers to it as design concept - in case of a shortage of Merlin engines, but never progressed further than the sketches

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The Typhoon/Tornado are direct descendants of the Hurricane, they were on the drawing board in 1937, before the Hurricane had even entered service.

 

to illustrate Graham's point about radial,  the Tornado ended up as an engine test bed,   they used a Centaurus engine

 

initial installation

Tornado_HG641_with_Centaurus_radial_engi

 

second, with a more streamlined nose

tornado-3.jpg

 

the bulky nature of this is better shown here

Ghawker-tornado-index.jpg

 

 

and then compare to the Tempest II,  remember, same engine, and essentially the same  fuselage, but thinner wing.

 

tempest-7.jpg

the Fw 190 engine had  the neat idea of running the exhaust pipes between the engine cylinders, leading to a much closer cowling, as can be  seen on this Tempest II

 

 

flat,1000x1000,075,f.u4.jpg

 

Fw190 engine installation for comparison

d121fbfefade62fb6e504b2e798c3422.jpg

 

FHC%20.jpg

 

Fw_190A-3_JG_2_in_Britain_1942.jpg

 

 The  Tempest II installation was reused for the  Sea Fury

 

HTH

Edited by Troy Smith
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I suspect that all twin-row radials run the one row's exhausts between the other row, so it's a bit more subtle than that.  The Centaurus on the Tornado had the exhausts facing forward, going into a collector ring and then using a single large exhaust pipe.  This was Bristol's way of reducing the drag of a radial engine and very advanced for the 1930s, but there remained the problem of either designing a very fat fuselage (for which Grumman is an ideal representative) or having the engine stick out of the side of a narrower fuselage, creating base drag.  However Tank came up with a clever solution.  The BMW exhausts faced aft, and he collected them together into a few clusters that exhausted behind the engine, so that the exhaust gases filled the gap behind the engine and reduced the base drag to a minimum.  Not that this was the only clever bit of the Fw190 design, to be fair.

 

When this was realised Bristol stopped developing the Centaurus until it could be redesigned for aft-facing exhausts, which took so much time the engine didn't make the war.  The Tornado was already dead by then, but a small run of early-standard Centaurus were used on Warwicks.

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Thanks for those drawings, Jun. Thank you for the info and further discussion, guys. Thanks for the other photos, Troy. Thank you, as always, Graham, for the information.

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I did a Dagger Hurricane some years back with a copy of the engine from the Magna MB2 and an Airfix Hurricane mk I.  Sadly, no photos of the finished beastie, but these were some WIP pics.  Do I win £5?

 

19598476_1946979818851478_62395669947068

 

19601534_1946979962184797_36828155080007

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1 hour ago, The Wooksta! said:

I did a Dagger Hurricane some years back with a copy of the engine from the Magna MB2 and an Airfix Hurricane mk I.  Sadly, no photos of the finished beastie, but these were some WIP pics.

 

 Do I win £5?

 

 

yes, here you go

Kim-Jong-Un-Face-Five-Pound-Note.jpg

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Priceless!

 

My sides are splitting and I was creased at work earlier with the antics of some outside (Indian) caterers.

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