British Secret Projects of WW2 Volume 3

Hello again. Another mixed bag of secret project designs; the third volume of British WW2 designs.

Gloster P.109 4 Jet Bomber
In August 1942, Gloster’s George Carter produced a design for a 4 jet bomber simply known as the Gloster Jet Bomber. This was the first British design for a bomber using jet power. Carter explained this was an on-going project and subsequently completed drawings for the improved and revised design P.190 in November the same year..

The P.190 looked like a very large Meteor, with a similar layout. The 4 Whittle W2B jets where housed in common nacelles mid wing. Each pair of engines shared a common intake and a common exhaust slot. Carter thought this design was probably the best that could be arrived at using the W2Bs. Six engines were also considered for the design but of course the weight would have increased.

Martin Baker Twin Boom Fighter
Martin Baker produced this handsome design for a twin engined, twin boom fighter around the end of 1944/early 1945. It is not known if the design was given a project number, and is known simply as the Twin Boom. The design was to use two Griffon power units housed one at each end of the cigar shaped fuselage, each Griffon powering a pair of 3-blade contra rotating props. Construction methods and design would probably have followed that of the MB5.

The crew of two was housed in slightly staggered twin side-by-side cockpits.

Miles M22
In 1941 Miles submitted this design to the Air Ministry hoping to use the Rolls Royce Griffon engine (1,600hp) that was just then becoming available.

Miles envisaged an extremely clean design that promised a much higher performance than anything produced thus far (150mph faster than the contemporary Spitfire and 100mph faster than the Mosquito).

The Miles M22 was to be of all-wooden construction except for metal wing spars, featuring a one piece low aspect elliptical plan wing. As there was not any fuselage clearance problems the two engines and props could be mounted much closer to the centre line, improving single engined performance and reducing take-off engine-cut effect..

The one problem with the design was that of pilot view. With this in mind it was proposed that the seat could be raised by 1 foot and the pilot would sit with his head outside and above the cockpit roof during take off and landing..

Armament was to be housed in the leading edge of the wing centre or a ten gun bullet shaped nacelle placed ahead of the cockpit..

Miles M58
In 1945 Miles came up with this twin boom design for a very small and light weight Naval patrol fighter using mixed piston/jet power units. A small piston engine driving a 3-blade propeller was mounted in the fuselage nose with the jet housed in the rear. The idea was that once airborne the jet could be shut down allowing the M58 to cruise around on patrol at low speed for up to seven hours duration, the jet engine then being called upon for combat.

Although nothing came of the design it was deemed to have merit. If it had been put into production it may have taken sales away from the DH Vampire. With this in mind I have done a few profiles of the M58 in the colours of countries that had Vampires in service after WW2.

Supermarine Type 313
A twin engined project using a pair of Rolls Royce Goshawk engines or Aero Engines Ltd (Hispano) 12Ys. The design saw the radiators buried in the lower inner wing, fed by small slot inlets under the leading edges. A battery of four 20mm cannon was housed in the nose. The design was very clean and tidy that would have promised a comparative high speed. The Goshawks may have proved too much ‘long in the tooth’ by the time it may have reached production and many think it probably would have had these replaced with Merlins, or Peregrines as used by the Westland Whirlwind..

The profile in the earth/dark green camouflage depicts the earlier engine choice, while the two proposed photo-recon versions show Merlins.

Supermarine Type 319
This was a two seat development of the F.11/37 fighter using a pair of Vulture 8.37 engines. The design had a streamlined fuselage and engine nacelles..

Armament consisted of two guns mounted in the lower nose firing forward and two mounted in the upper fuselage just aft of the cockpit firing at an oblique angle off 65 degrees. This technique was first tried during WW1 and later adopted by the Luftwaffe in later WW2 designs known as ‘Schrage Musik’.

Special Thanks Sincere thanks to all the Secret Projects site members who contributed, with special gratitude to Mr Justo Miranda for endless streams of references, expert advice and suggestions.

References
The following references proved invaluable in helping me to produce these profiles.

Those provided by Mr Justo Miranda, Jemiba and many others..

And the excellent book British Secret Projects. Fighters and Bombers 1935-1950 by Tony Buttler.

That’s it for now. More coming.