A troubled fighter that only redeemed itself later in the war as a fighter-bomber and, especially, a tankbuster. So goes the familiar view of the Hawker Typhoon. But, 80 years after its service entry with No 56 Squadron in September 1941, a more considered appraisal is possible. Just where did the Typhoon’s strengths and weaknesses lie?
Typhoon Ib EK286 was a presentation aircraft named Fiji V, photographed pre-delivery in April 1943.
The Hawker Typhoon, to many, is the great tankbuster of Normandy fame, while to others it is Sydney Camm’s failure whose tail fell off and had a poor engine. It is an odd dichotomy of thought that such a fine ground attack aircraft was hampered by glaring issues at either end of the airframe. Yet, 80 years on from the Typhoon’s arrival in RAF service, as you explore the nuances of those design decisions and its tankbusting record, its story becomes even more fascinating.
With this in mind, what were the battles Camm had to overcome that would see the Typhoon cement itself in the popular history of the Second World War, and its direct successors proving themselves the pinnacle of the final generation of piston-engined fighters? And once the Typhoon’s design was finally ironed out, just how accurate was the ‘great tankbuster’? As we look into the Typhoon’s war, we can draw comparisons with other Second World War fighters. But it is worth remembering that while the Typhoon entered RAF service just a few months before North American’s P-51 Mustang, the Hawker machine was very much a design of the previous generation.
A design out of time?
As Hurricane production ramped up in 1937 and plans were put in place to replace its fabric-covered wings with all-metal ones, Sydney Camm and his design team were already looking to the future. With new, exceedingly powerful engines in the works from Rolls-Royce, Napier and Bristol, Camm was keen to get a jump on the next generation of fighters. The design for the new aircraft evolved to become the Tornado and Typhoon; it was very much another Hawker fighter.
Camm’s magic was not restricted to the design office at Kingston. His influence extended to the Air Ministry itself, and specifically to the office responsible for the RAF’s future aircraft purchasing. The Typhoon’s specification, F18/37, had its genesis in conversations between Camm and Air Cdre R. H. Verdy in March 1937 when Camm wrote for advice asking what his team should be working on next. Early designs and ideas flowed between Hawker and the Air Ministry before the specification was published in draft on 1 November 1937. Camm and his small design team of just 120 people had a seven-month head start.
The first prototype Typhoon, P5212, in its original form — unarmed, with three exhaust stubs, and the small fin and rudder.
The specification called for a single-seat fighter capable of 400mph at 15,000ft, and with a ceiling of 35,000ft, while mounting 12 machine guns with 500 rounds of ammunition each. It would be powered by a 2,000hp engine. Following on from the specification for the Hurricane and Spitfire, the Air Ministry wanted a fast heavy bomber-destroyer. A day after the specification was officially received by Hawker, it invited the ministry to come and ‘advise’ on the mock-up it had produced.
“The Typhoon was a design of the generation before the P-51 ”
While single submissions were received from all the usual suspects — Supermarine, with the stunning Type 324, Gloster, Westland and Bristol — Camm submitted two designs to take advantage of the two engines under consideration. One was to be powered by the new Rolls- Royce Vulture, dubbed the Type R, and the other by the Napier Sabre, the Type N. While its competitors complained about Camm’s head start, Hawker won the bid in June 1938, and the aircraft were named the Tornado and Typhoon respectively.
This timeframe is vital when we consider the issues that emerged during flight-testing and service. Camm was well aware of the maxim that you need a thick wing to get an aircraft off the ground and a thin wing to keep it up, but he also had an eye to the strength of his aeroplane. The wing shape was vital and Camm looked to the United States for the latest data. There the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) tested and produced aerofoil shapes that companies like Hawker, Supermarine, Curtiss et al would pick off the shelf and use.
In 1938, NACA had concluded that laminar-flow wings had no benefit over more traditional shapes. This conclusion was proved false a year later when it found that turbulence in its wind tunnel was masking the efficiency of certain aerofoil shapes, and it updated its data. It is in this context that we need to evaluate the decision to carry on with the thick-wing philosophy seen on the Hurricane. Though an inefficient configuration, it was based on the best research available at the time the design was being finalised. Hawker would choose a NACA 22-series aerofoil for the new fighter, but with a 19 per cent thickness at the root and 13 per cent at the tip. Edgar Schmued at North American would read the revised data with great interest and incorporate this new research into his NA-73 — later, the Mustang — the following year.
Camm’s reasoning for carrying forward elements of his designs from aircraft to aircraft was two- fold. Knowing and refining what worked allowed for a smoother design process, and it minimised the need for retooling in the manufacturing stage. The latter element was vital as it also meant Hawker aircraft were quicker and cheaper to build, which kept T. O. M. Sopwith happy too.
R7579 was the fourth production MkIa. The pilot’s poor rearward vision with this style of cockpit canopy is most apparent.
The developing aircraft was much larger than the Hurricane but shared many structural similarities. Camm was conservative in nature and resisted the move towards a stress-skinned monocoque in the Hurricane, as he was sure of the proven Hawker method of design and construction. For the new Tornado and Typhoon, Camm would embrace the monocoque for the first time, but also stuck with what he knew. The forward structure would be the tried and tested Hawker tubular construction with the rear fuselage, mating at frame K, being a stressed-skin, flush-riveted, semi-monocoque. The tail would mate to the rear of the monocoque at the transport joint and be a very familiar Hawker shape. The landing gear would mirror the Hurricane’s wide track.
The mating of these differing constructions created a very robust structure, and what in modern terms would be considered a modular aircraft. This allowed for the many modifications the Typhoon would see throughout its service life.
From ‘coffin’ to bubble
The cockpit design included a notable layout innovation. The flap and landing gear selectors were moved to the left-hand side, increasing the ergonomics of the pilot’s office and decreasing workload. The flaps had variable positions, which proved useful in operation and combat. Surrounding the cockpit was the so-called ‘coffin hood’. As the size of the new fighter grew to accommodate the engine, so too did the size of the cockpit. The canopy layout proved to be a headache and a car-door design followed, as Bell had employed on the P-39 Airacobra. There were doors on either side of the cockpit with windows that could be opened, and a hinged Perspex lid on the top of the canopy, all of which had to be jettisoned to aid a quick exit from the aircraft.
“Camm said it was ‘so fast you will not need to look behind you’ ”
While there has been much debate as to the nature of the canopy design, comparing it with similar-sized fighter aircraft of the time shows many similarities, especially with the ‘birdcage’ canopies of the early Vought F4U Corsair and Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, and the hinged lid of the North American P-51 Mustang. But, in all their initial guises, they had to find the best solution they could and variations on the ‘coffin hood’ did the job. The enclosed rear of the Typhoon cockpit hid heavy armour plating behind the pilot, which had to be cut down, and the rear metal panels replaced with Perspex. The heavy framing throughout the canopy would also be constantly revised.
Early-production models of the Typhoon had very poor rearward vision. The metal-panelled rear of the cockpit led to a famous exchange between Hugh ‘Cocky’ Dundas, CO of No 56 Squadron, and Camm at Duxford in September 1941. Dundas’s complaints were seemingly ignored by Camm, who retorted that his new fighter was “so bloody fast you will not need to look behind you!”
While this has been repeatedly used as an example of Camm’s intransigence, it shows a glimpse of the man himself. Camm worked his way up from the shop floor at Hawker, a journey that involved many battles where he trod on plenty of toes. Myriad are the stories from the Kingston design office of Camm barking at someone, only to retract or change tack later. His outbursts were par for the course. In this way, he was very much like R. J. Mitchell, another engineer who made full use of the shopfloor language he had learnt on his journey through the ranks. Mitchell was not the cultured British gentleman gazing at the seagulls as played by Leslie Howard in The First of the Few. Camm’s other issue with the Typhoon that day at Duxford was simply that his new fighter was a year late, a year where vital lessons had been hard-won.
Eventually, as numerous modifications to the Typhoon’s canopy were made, the bubble canopy was settled on as the ultimate solution and placed the aircraft at the top of its class in terms of visibility and access, better even than the equally engine-troubled Focke-Wulf Fw 190. The bubble canopy was first adopted by the Typhoon in early 1943 but did not reach production aircraft until the end of the year.
Power and props
As the airframes took shape at Langley, the powerplants were not yet ready. At Rolls-Royce, the race was on to fix the teething issues with the Merlin while at the same time working on the Peregrine, Exe and Vulture. The Vulture had been chosen to power the Avro Manchester and the Hawker Tornado. It was an X-configuration, 42-litre, 24-cylinder engine that produced around 1,900hp. It was basically two Peregrines flying in tight formation and, in the Manchester at least, had a favoured state of being on fire.
At Napier, Maj Frank Halford had been refining his H-configuration engines and had settled on the 36-litre, 24-cylinder, sleeve-valve layout that would become the Sabre. The Sabre, though, was late. Really late. Being the more powerful of the two engines, producing well in excess of 2,000hp from the outset, it was not yet reliable. By February 1939, Napier was already ‘managing expectations’ for when Hawker would even get an engine in the first place. The first fully assembled Sabre would arrive eight months late.
Calum Douglas, in his masterly book The Secret Horsepower Race, sums up the Sabre’s development as starting three years too late to meet the needs of a 1941 fighter. The process was plagued with maladies from its first run in January 1938. Issues with its bearings, crankshafts and sleeve valves required dedicated work from Vandervell, intervention from competitor Bristol and a takeover by English Electric before quality control and reliability were mostly sorted out by 1944. The political manoeuvring by Rolls- Royce to have Napier’s programme shut down and the casting-out of Halford from Napier all contributed to the Sabre’s delays.
The single-piece bubble canopy installation was tested for the first time on MkIb R8809.
Yet it is interesting to draw a comparison between the Sabre and Merlin development. It took about six years from initial runs on the Merlin before the Merlin III proved an acceptable, decisive powerplant, powering the Hurricane and Spitfire to victory in 1940. The Sabre IIa of 1944, while limited to approximately 25 hours of operation between checks, was the powerplant envisioned by Halford. The Sabre IIb ultimately powered arguably the finest piston-engined fighter of the Second World War, the Tempest V, which started life as the Typhoon II.
The Napier Sabre was continually developed and tested, and manufacturing was updated all while the Typhoon was in front-line service, but the Vulture-engined Tornado would never get that far. The poor reliability of the Vulture in the Manchester, with failures and fires, was commonplace. The Tornado was proving an impressive aircraft when the engine performed as expected. The Typhoon was plagued with vibration, partly due to the Sabre being mounted to the forward main spar. This was avoided in the Tornado as the Vulture’s X-configuration allowed its wing to be mounted 3in lower than on the Typhoon. The Vulture was also a shorter engine than the Sabre, so it was mounted forward of the main spar. This greatly reduced the vibration seen in the Typhoon. The type’s fuselage with the Sabre running was said to almost hum with vibration and it was likened to an electric shock. The pilot’s seat would be sprung, and rubber dampeners added to the engine mounts. The propellers mounted to both engines may have contributed to additional issues that the Typhoon faced in operation.
A 1,000lb bomb being loaded onto a Typhoon.
THE TYPHOON’S THOUSAND- POUNDERS
On the morning of 6 June 1944, as the Allied invasion forces prepared, Typhoons of No 143 (RCAF) Wing attacked the defences on Gold, Juno and Sword beaches. No 438 Squadron dropped 24 1,000lb bombs on the blockhouses on Gold beach. No 439 Squadron did likewise on the defences at Juno as the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division was about to land. No 440 Squadron attacked Sword with 24 500lb bombs. All the Typhoons were back at base by 08.15hrs.
Two hours later, while the invasion forces slogged their way inland and 2 TAF’s Typhoons waited impatiently for calls for support, the telephone rang at Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force HQ, where the wing commander ops was L. E. Healy. The call was from the Air Ministry, to say it still was not possible to clear the Typhoon for use of the 1,000lb bomb. Healy informed the ministry representative that Typhoons had been dropping 1,000lb bombs for two months. He then offered a solution: to stop armourers arming Typhoons with such bombs until the ministry signed them off and that they would approach the recipients of any 1,000-pounders dropped on them, ask for them back and apologise for the error. There is no recorded response to Healy’s offer to recover the 48 1,000lb bombs dropped by the Canadians that morning.
Groundcrew attend to the Napier Sabre engine of MkIb R8220, on the strength of the Typhoon’s first operating unit, No 56 Squadron at Duxford.
Matt Bearman’s recent research into supersonic shockwaves on propeller blades opens a fascinating area of study. Bearman looks at the Rolls-Royce Vulture in the Manchester and the Peregrine in the Westland Whirlwind, among others, and finds similarities with vibration through varying degrees of pitch. Even more fascinating is the data showing that most Second World War aircraft would be slower at high rpm, due to increased drag, than at a slightly lower throttle setting. This can be put down to their propeller blades effectively stalling or suffering such drag from the shockwave on their leading edge and tip that the constant-speed units would fail, propshafts would bend and high levels of vibration would be passed back through the engine. On the large-diameter, 16ft blades on the Manchester, this had catastrophic effects on the Vulture. The smaller-diameter propeller on the Tornado (13ft 3in) allowed it to fly quite happily throughout its testing life.
Avro’s nightmare with the Manchester and Vulture would see both programmes being cancelled. Avro recovered with the Merlinengined Lancaster, with 13ft props. The Tornado order, initially 500 aircraft to the Typhoon’s 250, was transferred to the Typhoon.
The thick, three-blade prop on the Typhoon drove the production aircraft until late 1943 when a thinner four-blade unit was introduced. This significantly reduced the vibration issues. It was also a change first mooted by Camm in 1941. It will be fascinating in the future to compare this data with the two current Typhoon restoration projects once they are both airborne, as JP843 is planned to have a three-blade prop and RB396 a four-blader.
Tornado R7936, the sole productionstandard example of the type, saw use by Rotol on contrarotating propeller development.
Typhoon flight-testing commenced when prototype P5212 took to the air for the first time on 24 February 1940. Of course, as with all new aircraft, issues were found. Hawker chief test pilot Philip Lucas recommended that a larger rudder be fitted to help with directional stability. Lucas would be awarded the George Medal three months later when P5212 suffered a rear monocoque failure just aft of the cockpit. Being able to see daylight through the fuselage, Lucas decided to stick with it and brought the aircraft back to Langley. A week later, Minister of Aircraft Production Lord Beaverbrook issued his ‘Five Types’ instruction. This order prioritised resources to be spent on the five current front-line aircraft types already in RAF service, the Blenheim, Whitley, Wellington, Spitfire and Hurricane. Work on the Typhoon slowed to a crawl as Hawker therefore focused on the Hurricane.
Members of No 181 Squadron with their Typhoon Ibs during June 1943, the aircraft in the foreground being R8871 Cemetery Bait II, with DN421 Doreen behind.
When the test programme fully resumed in the autumn, P5212 had already been clocked at 410mph at 20,000ft. All was looking good for the Typhoon. Production at Gloster’s Hucclecote factory was starting to increase. With the focus switched to cannonequipped aircraft, 110 production examples of the Typhoon Ia, with 12 Brownings, were delivered. All would be converted to cannonarmed MkIb standard through 1942 as production shifted to the more heavily armed variant.
While the Sabre delivery delays were such that completed Typhoons were rare beasts in 1941, No 56 Squadron started working up on the type, and by the end of October it had 16 examples. For pilots transitioning from the Spitfire and Hurricane, the Typhoon was a bit of a shock. It weighed nearly 50 per cent more than the Spitfire, and the massive power and torque of its Sabre engine were very different from the Merlin. The muscle memory acquired after years of flying and fighting in the lighter fighters needed to be retrained for the new aircraft. Interestingly, Spitfire pilots later converting to the Griffon-engined Spitfire XIV made similar comments.
As production aircraft slowly arrived on squadrons, pilots complained about headaches and nausea. This was traced to high levels of carbon monoxide in the cockpit. The source was found to be the positioning of the exhaust stubs and the seals and piping for the gun-bay heating, which was tapped off the exhaust. Modifications and trials continued, but this invisible threat soon claimed the Typhoon’s first fatality.
“Kenneth Seth- Smith’s accident shocked Hawker to the core ”
Plt Off James Deck was one of three brothers from Argentina who volunteered for the RAF. On 1 November 1941, Deck took Typhoon R7592 up from Duxford to test the latest modifications to the exhaust. Twelve minutes into the flight, the aircraft crashed at East Harling near Thetford. Deck’s autopsy showed high levels of carbon monoxide in his liver that would have caused him to pass out. The modification Deck had been testing was scrapped and all Typhoon pilots were ordered to fly on oxygen from start-up to shut-down. Legend has it that then-Wg Cdr Bob Stanford Tuck, the Duxford wing leader, was due to perform that test flight, but was called away to the telephone and asked Deck to take his place. Deck was 27 when he died; his brothers would also be killed in RAF service. His older brother Harold was lost the following year in a No 266 Squadron Boston on a raid to Jever, and his younger brother Charles was shot down in a No 222 Squadron Tempest, EJ883, in April 1945.
With engine and carbon monoxide issues plaguing the Typhoon, the first case of structural failure of the tail would not be officially recorded until the middle of 1942, when No 257 Squadron’s R8633 crashed. Its pilot, 24-yearold Canadian Plt Off William McDunnough, was new to the type and was in a shallow dive when he pulled out and the tail separated from the aircraft. Two weeks later, Hawker test pilot Kenneth Seth- Smith was killed when R7692, carrying out a speed run with the top canopy panel removed, broke up in a climbing turn.
This incident shocked everyone at Hawker to the core, as Seth-Smith was one of their own. Investigations began immediately but the cause was not clear. Understanding of high-speed aerodynamics, transonic and supersonic, was still in its infancy. Philip Lucas later confirmed this when he stated that they realised they were discovering new areas of aerodynamics, but were too busy trying to fix the Typhoon to realise it.
Sqn Ldr T. H. V. Pheloung of No 56 Squadron demonstrates MkIb EK183 to the press in April 1943.
The Typhoon’s flight-testing from 1941-43 is an intriguing story. The Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough had already been looking into the type when the tail issues began. Initially, cracks were found in the rear spar, which was then strengthened. The flight tests included heavily instrumented aircraft being flown to their limits. In late 1942, the famous ‘fishplate’ modification was discussed, introduced in February 1943 as MOD-286. This was supplied as a retrofit pack so all aircraft could have the 20 plates fitted along the stringers and across the transport joint. But still accidents continued, even with the strengthened rear fuselage, as the breaking point moved forward.
When Plt Off ‘Killy’ Kilpatrick survived DN510’s tail coming off, his feedback was eagerly sought by Hawker pilots, including the ‘on rest’ Sqn Ldr Roland ‘Bee’ Beamont, who started flying the same profile in an attempt to try and re-create the failure. In peacetime, the aircraft would have been grounded, but the war and the Typhoon’s prowess at low level meant that, despite the lack of engines, production continued, and bombs and rockets were signed off for use on the aircraft through 1943. Both weapons were released in a dive, when the Typhoon was most at risk of shedding its tail.
The solution, when found, was fascinating. With compressibilityinduced flutter not proven as the sole culprit, a Typhoon was put on a rig at Farnborough and literally shaken to bits. The electric suspension tests of November 1943 found that at 9.3Hz and 13.2Hz there was a major resonance through the fuselage, which showed the tail and the entire aircraft were moving about. This created a ‘node’ that broke the fuselage apart. The discovery led to the fix sought for so long, MOD-353. It involved a change to the mass balance weight and an increase in the weight itself to 8lb (3.6kg), which later would be trimmed to 6lb (2.7kg). An inertia weight was added below the control column of 16lb (7.25kg). The combination of these two weights dampened the resonances through the aircraft.
Coupled with the 13 per cent larger tailplane, a bubble canopy and the later addition of the fourbladed propeller, the type was now ready to commence the campaign against German radar sites leading to D-Day. These modifications were carried out at wings and maintenance units at a pace, to ensure the Typhoon was prepared for the long-awaited liberation of occupied Europe.
No structural concerns here, clearly. Groundcrew from an unspecified squadron test the strength of a Typhoon’s wings in an April 1943 publicity image, originally captioned “High wing loading!”
Such was the confidence in MOD-353 that it came as a shock when, on 24 May 1944, No 175 Squadron returned from a sortie against the radar station at Cap de la Hève and reported that Typhoon JR311 had suffered a structural failure and lost its tail as Plt Off Stuart Finlayson, Royal Canadian Air Force, pulled out of his dive. There was concern that the modification had not solved the problem. An investigation discovered that JR311, and several other No 121 Wing Typhoons, had been missed during the update effort. The necessary haste had cost Finlayson his life, but the changes worked and the Typhoon entered the phase of the war that would cement its legend ready for the most intense combat tests it would face. It is understood, based upon Chris Thomas’s research, that 26 aircraft were lost to structural failure, resulting in the death of 24 pilots. This accounts for almost four per cent of Typhoon fatalities.
On airfield B78 at Eindhoven, the Netherlands, No 137 Squadron Typhoon Ib MN234 runs up its Sabre, toting a full load of 60lb rocket projectiles beneath the wings.
The ‘great tankbuster’: fact or fiction?
The rocket-firing Typhoons of the 2nd Tactical Air Force are part of the Normandy legend. The image of the ‘tankbusting Typhoon’ is a popular one, but the truth is that its tankbusting credentials are overblown. Operational research reports compiled immediately after the battles found few wrecked tanks that would corroborate the claims made by the pilots. While some have put this down to simple overclaiming or recovery of the damaged German Panzers, a look at the reality of the Typhoon’s weapons shows us that while its cannon were more precise but lighter-hitting, today we would term the 60lb RP-3 rocket as an ‘area weapon system’, such were its inaccuracies.
A famous image of JR128, a typical late-production MkIb incorporating rear fuselage reinforcements, bomb attachment points, the bubble canopy and other refinements, in service with No 183 Squadron.
Put yourself in the cockpit of a rocket-firing Typhoon flying into the maelstrom of Operation ‘Lüttich’ around Mortain on 7 August 1944, known as the ‘Day of the Typhoon’. As you approach the target area at around 8,000ft, your leader calls out the targets and you fly over them, waiting for him to lead you down. As the target passes the trailing edge of your wing, you roll into the target and dive. Getting your Typhoon’s nose down 60°, standing on your rudder pedals, you pick your target, line up your gunsight, which has been designed for air-to-air and only slightly modified for the role you are now using it for, and fire your cannon to gauge the range and drop of your rockets and to keep the heads down of the people shooting back at you. In front of you is another Typhoon — it may be being hit, but you press on. At around 4,000ft you release your rockets, which whoosh off their rails, and you haul back on the stick, pulling up to 7 or 8g as you race for safety. Looking back over your shoulder, black smoke surrounds the tanks, trucks and horses and you are sure you hit your target. You try to form up with what is left of your flight and head for home. You will be back over Mortain soon.
The attack phase lasted mere seconds, but the facts relating to the weapons in use show that hitting a target was more luck than judgement. In clear air, in a 60° dive, releasing your rockets at 4,000ft, roughly 1,700 yards (1,555m) from the target, would give you a relatively high chance of a hit or damage near-miss with the 60lb RP-3 rocket. For every 150 yards (137m) you release your rockets too far from that sweet spot, they drop 15 yards (14m) short; 150 yards too close and they travel 15 yards too far. And that is not counting anything else. For every 2g you are pulling, the rockets will deviate by around 30 yards (27m). Every 4° of sideslip you’ve dialled in to counteract the wind, you are missing by 50 yards (46m). Then, for every 20mph gust of wind, the rocket will be blown 30 yards (27m) off course. To ensure a hit with a weapon put together quickly by an armourer in a dusty field as one of the thousands of rockets he and his mates need to assemble that day, and which may bind on the rail as it launches, you need to complete these complex calculations in your head and trim your aircraft correctly to counter these effects, all while in a 500mph dive and being shot at.
A simulated scramble by a No 175 Squadron pilot to his waiting Typhoon at airfield B5, located at Le Fresne-Camilly in Normandy, on 24 July 1944.
While brewing up a Tiger tank was what the Typhoon pilots clearly set out to do, their effectiveness over the battlespace should not be counted in binary terms of tanks destroyed. While claims at Mortain were in their hundreds, there were also biblical amounts of artillery falling on von Kluge’s Panzers. What the Typhoons achieved that day, along with IX Tactical Air Command’s P-47 Thunderbolts on the flanks, was to be the blocking force that allowed the artillery to wreak havoc and gain time for the Americans to prepare their counter-attack. Putting yourself back in the cockpit and seeing a black plume of smoke burst from the Panzer you were aiming at, you can be forgiven for claiming a hit when it was the driver gunning the engine to get away or igniting the smoke pack some carried to mask their escape.
“The Typhoon was best deployed in the interdiction role ”
When you start considering all this, that they hit anything at all is incredible. But there are other ways to put a Panzer out of action. If you remove any of its fuel, oil, spares or crew, the Panzer is just as disabled as if you hit it with your rockets or bombs. But the greater effect is what your attack means to the enemy. The constant ‘Jabo’ — Jagdbomber, or fighter-bomber — presence is morale-sapping to the defender and a measurable boost to the attacker who has called you in.
Two Operational Research Section (ORS) teams examined the Mortain area the week after the battle. In its three days, 2 TAF’s pilots had claimed, according to Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham’s report, 89 tanks destroyed with a further 56 possibly destroyed. ORS 2 TAF and No 2 ORS would report that they could only identify 21-26 armoured fighting vehicles as being directly destroyed by all air strikes, not specifically from Typhoons. The reports were eye-opening at 2 TAF HQ, but the ORS team’s report summed up its findings in its introduction by stating, “The truth of the matter is that rockets knocked out a number of tanks, caused a great confusion amongst the enemy and, without any doubt, speeded the collapse of the counter-attack.”
Under the supervision of their flight sergeant, armourers from No 609 Squadron lift 3in rocket projectiles fitted with 60lb warheads for loading onto the unit’s Typhoon Ibs at Thorney Island, West Sussex. Behind them stands JR379, which has already been armed.
No 181 Squadron’s MkIb R8831 was used for trials with two 500lb bombs mounted underwing.
While the studies showed that the effectiveness of close air support (CAS) by fighter-bombers in the Second World War did minimal material damage, a ground force which attacked quickly after an air strike would be more successful and suffer fewer casualties. This led to fighter-bombers becoming a bit of a crutch to the army as the war went on. The Canadians would coin the term ‘Whistle for a Tiffy’ when they encountered resistance.
Where the Typhoon was best deployed was beyond the lines in the interdiction role, rather than in CAS. This was something Raymond Collishaw knew in the Western Desert in 1940 and was proved time and again by 1 and 2 TAFs and IX TAC. Destroying the enemy’s ability to fight before it reached the front lines meant the advance would face weakened and tired resistance. But interdiction is flown against defended positions. So, while a quartet of 20mm cannon would wreak havoc among the soft-skins and horse-drawn supply trains, the light and medium flak thrown up to meet the Typhoons only increased as the Wehrmacht was pushed back. The losses were very heavy indeed, but the flak did not stop the Typhoon pilots from pressing home their attacks.
The ‘Tiffy’s’ true legacy
The aerodynamic issues faced by the Typhoon were vital for the understanding of what would come next. While Hawker, the RAE and the RAF were frantically trying to grasp the phenomena that was proving critical for the aircraft, every advance discovered went into the Typhoon II. The 5in-thinner wing that Camm and his team discussed in 1941 was crucial to the Tempest V when it entered service in 1944. The Napier Sabre IIb-powered aircraft would prove to be the premier medium- to low-level fighter of the Second World War.
It was only in the final 18 months of its operational life that the Typhoon achieved its potential. What it eventually achieved on the battlefield was impressive, especially considering the relatively small size of 2 TAF’s Typhoon force. The battle to figure it out was worth the effort. Napier would — after enforced mergers, political intrigue and partnerships — produce the Sabre IIb and V, which saw the Tempest well into the 1950s with various air forces. The ‘Light Weight Fighter’ project started by Hawker in 1942 evolved the Tempest into the Fury, which faced its own batch of engine issues with the Bristol Centaurus. The Sea Fury in Fleet Air Arm service would see combat over Korea in the same ground attack role as its predecessor, and even claimed a MiG-15 at the hands of Sub-Lt Brian ‘Schmoo’ Ellis on 9 August 1952.
The foundations laid by Sydney Camm and his Hawker team originally intended the Typhoon to meet the RAF’s needs as the next heavy bomber destroyer. Operational requirements took their design in an unexpected direction, and the engineers had to fight hard to work out the kinks in their design.
Examining the Typhoon’s design and operational history shows that the ‘poor aeroplane, great tankbuster’ moniker should be inverted to become ‘good aeroplane, poor tankbuster’, because it became a very good aeroplane indeed while its ability to destroy tanks was overblown. And the aircraft developed from the Typhoon can rightly be claimed to be great.