by Phil Delnon
By the mid-1930s, things were hotting up. The Depression was easing, and Westland was working on many different aircraft. Penrose found himself on a familiarisation course for the Cierva autogyro. Being the man he was he decided to try diving it, working step by step until he found his safe limit at 120mph. Penrose and his colleagues at Westland decided that the rotor blades must be twisting, and passed on a warning. The Cierva people dismissed this, saying that civilian pilots would not dive the machine. Maybe not, but military ones would: a few months later an RAF autogyro dived from 1000 feet and crashed into the sea.
Meanwhile Westland was persisting with the futuristic swept-wing, tailless Pterodactyl. RAE pilots had not been able to make it spin, so Penrose had a bash. Eventually he managed it, and found the recovery very simple. In 1933 a visitor came to Westland to exchange information on wind-tunnel tests of delta-wing stability and control: it was Alexander Lippisch, whose passion for tailless gliders would lead to his design of the Me-163 rocket fighter.
More immediately significant for Westland was the first enclosed canopy on the DV6, which reduced the slipstream-buffeting for the pilot. Renamed the Wallace, the plane was ordered for the Auxiliary Air Force.
With this security, experiments with the Pterodactyl continued. Always enthusiastic, Penrose found himself directed to an old dark house in deepest Dorset, where a white-bearded old man in a skull-cap was reading the Koran. He showed Penrose what remained of the tailless model gliders he had made and flown before the Wright Brothers flew. The largest of them had an 8ft wingspan and a close resemblance to the Pterodactyl which Penrose could not help but comment on.
Perhaps that's because one of your designers came to see me, was the laconic reply.
Next for testing was a high-winged monoplane with a 60ft wingspan and a wide, fixed undercarriage. Named the P7, Penrose had been involved with its design in some detail, and did not anticipate too many problems when he took it up. Nor were there many; the main one being distortion of the wing when rolling at high speed. The chief designer was unwilling to believe this until taken up for a demonstration...
Penrose was becoming valuable now: not only did he have a parachute, but his insurance was raised to £5,000. He was about to appreciate why.
Aeronautical engineers had already realised that mounting the engine in the middle of an aeroplane would make for a much more central centre of gravity and a much better aerobatic performance - important for a fighter. This was to lead to such aircraft as the American Bell P-38 Airacobra, which actually went into service.
Westland's attempt was the F7/30 biplane fighter, which exploited the free space at the front to have a more streamlined nose section and to mount the cockpit there, giving the pilot excellent vision far superior to that provided by conventional front-engined craft. The disadvantage was the open cockpit. RAF pilots were opposed to enclosed cockpits on the grounds of reduced vision and difficulties in escape, but the extremely high slipstream battering the pilot's head in the F7/30 left no choice. Penrose found the vision unimpaired: the escape manoeuvre he was about to discover for himself.
Penrose took the F7/30 for its test flights; and when he rolled the aircraft it caught fire behind him. There was no automatic fire extinguisher, so he switched off the engine, checked his parachute and headed home in a glide. Almost the entire fabric covering of the fuselage had been burnt away and the tailplane had been singed. A post-flight inspection resulted in a redesign of the fuel supply system. The aircraft was repaired, Penrose took it up and again tried a roll. Fire. Engine off and glide back home again, muttering threats. This time only the port side of the fuselage had been burnt bare. We were improving, comments Penrose. And after further modifications, two weeks later the problem had been solved.
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