by Phil Delnon
The Whirlwind was due for delivery in a mere 9 months: Penrose was testing the prototype in earnest. Under such pressure there were bound to be problems: on one occasion the canopy blew off and just missed his head: on another the starboard aileron broke loose, its push-rod having been almost severed by the engine exhaust system. A redesigned system of stub exhausts -as used on the Spitfire- fixed that.
Meanwhile the balloon went up -quite literally- for the first blimps were rising around London as peace ebbed away. In May 1939 Penrose took a Whirlwind to a public RAF display and stole the headlines by setting up the fastest time recorded there: but in July he cut the back of his hand on some exposed bolts in its cockpit and was soon very ill indeed, with a recurrence of dysentery.
By the time war was declared in September he was back at Westland, and as an RAFO flying officer was expecting his call-up papers. They didn't come. Undismayed, Penrose volunteered anyway: the RAF turned him down. At 36 he was too old, and as a test pilot too valuable. The second reason was probably the more truthful: during the Battle of Britain there were British pilots such as Douglas Bader who were in their 30s - and some of the Czechs and Poles were over 40.
The fever of war brought astonishing innovations. Winston Churchill was to call it the Wizard War because of the huge leaps made as a result of the applications of science. One of these was the invention of the tandem monoplane, which had a high monoplane wing mounted forwards, and a low monoplane wing at the rear, with no struts or other physical connection between the two sets of wings. It offered huge manoeuvrability and a stable gun platform, but eventually turned out to be another dead end.
In the meantime Penrose delivered one of two Whirlwinds sent up to Scotland, and found himself under anti-aircraft fire which was fortunately inaccurate. He also flew the Curtiss Mohawk, sent under lease-lend for assembly at Westland, and which he found heavy to control.
It was in a Whirlwind that he first saw an enemy: Penrose dived for the safety of cloud cover - as did the German, unaware that the twin-engined fighter was totally unarmed, its civilian-rated pilot banned from carrying ammunition. Penrose was aware of his limitations as a fighter pilot, but after a later encounter with a Dornier bomber he officially requested live rounds, arguing that against such a target even a reservist ought to be able to do at least some damage. He was refused again.
Meantime the Air Ministry had reduced its original Whirlwind order from 200 to 114, and had cancelled the order for the second 200. Instead the lend-lease aircraft were arriving from the USA: Penrose was not impressed.
He was even less impressed when he test-flew the Tomahawk. Its Allison engine failed to deliver, and he found himself making a belly-landing in a nearby field, bashing his head on the windscreen so violently as to tear off part of his scalp. So the beast was appropriately-named, at least.
Westland now had plenty to do - and was experimenting with a high altitude designs involving a sealed and pressurised cockpit - but the first big success was to be the Lysander, which was to prove its value in secret operations into occupied France. Penrose flew the tandem version with its rear-mounted four-gun turret, and found it extremely stable. This plane was probably intended for strafing beaches. By the time it was ready, however, the invasion scare was over - which is probably just as well for RAF aircrews: the fate of accurate but slow aircraft in modern warfare had been very plainly demonstrated in June 1940, when the Luftwaffe sent its highly-successful Ju87's to dive-bomb shore installations, and the RAF held so many Stuka Parties that the aircraft played no further part in that battle.
So nothing came of the beach-strafing aircraft, nor of the Whirlwind. Even Lysander production came to an end: Westland was put to building Spitfires. Not Hurricanes: it was a compliment in its way.
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