The Hawker Tempest

OK - it never fired a shot in WWII, but it was designed and - just - flew in the WWII period ; and it's a very impressive aircraft - the Hawker Sea Fury was born out of the Tempest, using an 18-cylinder Bristol Centaurus engine.

This is the Royal Navy Historic Flight's own Sea Fury, as seen at todays' Duxford May Airshow. Bear in mind that Armin Faber's Fw190A, accidentally landed at Pembrey airfield in WWII, was studied very closely and many lessons from it went into the Sea Fury design.....

 

Do you happen to have a listing of current or past Sea Fury owners ?

In the 1970's a guy named John Stokes of San Marcos Texas had a Sea Fury and was in the Confederate Air Force and I have some pictures of his aircraft and saw it perform in air shows and he also did some air racing in Reno at some point in time but I don't know what became of the aircraft. It might have been wrecked air racing.

 

I'm a bit dubious about that...you quite often read that one plane influenced another, mainly on the basis that they looked similar, but in reality they looked similar because their designers faced similar problems and took the same logical approaches to solving them.

The principal influence on the design of the Sea Fury was the Tempest. And the principal influence on that was experience with the problems of the Typhoon....

 

Sorry, Tony, you're quite right and I over-simplified things a little.

To be a bit more precise - Hawker Tornado HG641 can be seen as an important step in the development process of the radial-engined Tempest/Sea Fury. It first flew in October 1941 using the 18-cylinder Bristol Centaurus engine and underwent a continual programme of trials throughout the following months with Hawkers and the RAE at Farnborough. The Faber incident happened in June 1942 and the Fw190 was taken to Farnborough where for sure there was considerable interest in how the enemy had produced such an effective radial-engined single-seater. The finalized version of the Tornado flew in November 1942 with improved engine-cooling and exhaust systems.

So it was indeed a continual development process of Tornado/Typhoon/Tempest/Sea Fury - with perhaps just a little soupcon of Fw190 added for good measure...

 

Its a beautiful plane

 

I would have thought that many different aircraft influences each new generation. Several American aircraft would have some influence, including the P-47.

 

I would divide influences up into two categories: generic ones (monoplanes, retractable undercarriages, double-slotted flaps, supercharged engines, variable-pitch props etc) and specific ones (layouts or features borrowed from particular planes). The former is very common, the latter quite rare I would think.

I doubt very much that the huge P-47 influenced the neat little Fury in any way, except perhaps in causing the designers to think "Christ! We don't want anything that big!"

 

Tempest did see active service in WW2, though not the centaurus engined MkII depicted above.

 

I was looking at how many Sea Furys were left and was surprised at the number of them. I think the one I saw in the 70's was the one that is now painted as the Texas flag. YUK !

http://www.airliners.net/search/pho...ricsearch=Hawker Sea Fury&distinct_entry=true

 

The main reason that so many are left flying today is that a cache of 24 Furies - in very good condition - were found in Iraq in the 1970s and released into the 'Warbird' market by two US dealers.

 

At least something good has come out of Iraq !

I would like to have the one on display in Cuba.

 

I fell in love with the sea fury after reading one of the commando comics (no 168 for those of you who are into these things, not that I am :S). Beautiful kite.

 

This is a nice site
on the Tempest.

http://www.hawkertempest.se/mark.htm

 

WOW ! That prototype is an ugly looking beast. I was also looking at the cockpit picture and as with most British aircraft it is laid out in helter skelter fashion. I have never understood why they did it that way. The only nice cockpit I have seen is the Martin Baker cockpit.

Thanks for the link !

 

The concept of laying out a cockpit in a logical fashion to meet the needs of the pilots doesn't seem to have occurred to British designers at that time - they stuck the dials and controls wherever. They also didn't usually think about designing planes so that they would be easy to maintain (or even easy to build). Martin Baker was an honourable exception on both counts.

 

Lets see, the P-47 is 1" 3" longer, 1" shorter wing span, is 750lbs heavier empty, and the Tempest had 4 20mm guns the P-47 8 12.7mm guns, not to mention that P-47 could carry 1000lbs more in bombs then the Tempest could or that the P-47 was serving in combat before the Tempest was even a twinkle in someones eye.

 

That is wrong. I live in Texas, and even then, it's wrong. Such an incredible piece of aviation history doesn't need to be degraded in such a manner...

Anyway, I now know the name of the airfield that Faber's 190 landed on.

 

Of course, all aircraft designers look closely at the products of others, if only, as has been said elsewhere here, to avoid their mistakes, but I cannot see the Jug influencing the Tempest/Fury very much at all, and, in any event, certainly nowhere near as much as the installation of a Rolls-Royce Merlin into a P-51 Mustang influenced that particular aircraft.