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Description
| Manufacturer: | Hawker | |
| Base model: | Sea Fury | |
| Designation: | Sea Fury | |
| Version: | FB 11 | |
| Basic role: | Fighter (UK) | |
| Crew: | Pilot | |
Specifications
| Length: | 34' 8" | 10.6 m | |
| Height: | 16' 1" | 4.9 m | |
| Wingspan: | 38' 4" | 11.7 m | |
| Wingarea: | 280.0 sq ft | 26.0 sq m | |
| Empty Weight: | 9,240 lb | 4,190 kg | |
| Gross Weight: | 12,500 lb | 5,670 kg | |
Propulsion
| No. of Engines: | 1 | ||
| Powerplant: | Bristol Centaurus 18 | ||
| Horsepower (each): | 2480 | ||
Performance
| Max Speed: | 460 mph | 740 km/h | 400 kt |
| Ceiling: | 35,800 ft | 10,910 m | |
Examples of this type may be found at
| Museum | City | State |
| Canada Aviation Museum | +ttawa | Ontario |
Recent comments by our visitors
| Clive S Herts, UK, OTH | Rick,
It seems quite a few Sea Furies have been re-engined, but there are some still flying with their original Centaurus sleeev-valve engines, which is nice. The Centaurus\' predecessor, the 1650 HP Hercules (65,000 produced), was of course acknowledged as the most reliable high output military engine in large scale manufacture during WWII. Only 2800 Centauri were produced, but was considered a good reliable engine from its first installation, subsequently ending up in a variety of transport aircraft (it\'s just occurred to me that I\'ve flown in one, the Bristol Beverley 4-engined troop transport!) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Centaurus In practice the large Wright radials would of course have reduced the Sea Fury\'s range and endurance considerably - as for a carrier \'go-around\'... don\'t even think about it (British carriers decks were and are today, much smaller than the typical US floating city!). Even with the Centaurus , an abort required a lot of care in re-applying full power... whereas as mentioned below, the contra-prop Griffon Seafire was a dream. The two were pretty well matched, though the Fury was considered generally more robust for carrier duties, particularly with regard to its wider undercarriage track. In fact, the Seafire, as all Griffon Spitfires, had a remarkable climb rate and would find itself at 40,000 ft nearly a minute before the Sea Fury (about 10 minutes dead!) It could also out-turn just about any other fighter built between 1940 and 1950, due to its super wing. Even at the end of its intensive 10 year development period, having had its power and climb rate doubled, and top speed increased by nearly a third, the late Griffon Spitfires and Seafires were still an interceptor you wouldn\'t want to tangle with! The Mk XIX photo-recce Spits could also claw their way up to 50,000 ft and sometimes more near the equator and of course, one is famous for exceeding M 0.9 in a dive from that altitude and staying in one piece... 11/24/2007 @ 13:06 [ref: 18654] |
| Rick Pellicciotti Memphis, TN | I just happened up on this page. The Sea Fury in Memphis is operated by the Memphis Squadron of the Commemorative Air Force. It has been re-engined (like a lot of other Sea Furys) with a Wright 3350, 3000hp engine. The Wright is a lot more reliable and parts are readily available. You can learn more about the Memphis Squadron here:
http://www.caf-memphis.org The airplane made the cover of Sport Aviation magazine, October 2007 edition. 10/09/2007 @ 03:56 [ref: 18139] |
| Chris Wright Sydney NSW, OTH | Hi Clive,
I\'ve read a lot about Typhoons, Tempests and Sea Furies over the years - originally converted to the \"cause\" 1st by reading Pierre Clostermann\'s \"The Big Show\" and 2nd that the Royal Aust Navy used Sea Furies in Korea - but I\'ve never read about Sabres making 4000hp before. I\'m an ex-Qantas airframe/engine fitter on 747s and this figure astounds me for a piston engine. Can you suggest books on the subject that could fill in this void, and as an aside - have you ever seen photos of an RR Griffon powered Fury with 6-blade contra prop? I have but the book that shows it has no detail on flying it or performance data (Typhoon & Tempest at War - Reed and Beaumont - Publ by Ian Allan). Regards, CRW, Sydney Australia 07/06/2005 @ 21:32 [ref: 10689] |
| Clive Smith , OTH | .. but the Seafire, although maybe slightly slower in that context, had many other wonderful attributes. One, was that its contra-rotating prop, meant that failed carrier deck approaches (go-arounds) were almost without incident. Not so an aircraft that required full power applying at slow speed through such an enormous prop rotating one way - this was a very delicate operation and could easily lead to loss of control at a critical point. 02/06/2005 @ 22:22 [ref: 9382] |
| John , OTH | The Sea Fury\'s main claim to fame occurred on August 2, 1952, when an FB 11 flown by by Lt. Peter \"Hoagy\" Carmichael of 802 Squadron shot down a MiG-15 over Korea. 09/27/2003 @ 15:28 [ref: 6719] |
| Robert Davies Colchester, Essex, AL | My uncle, David Davies, flew a Sea Fury while he was a test pilot for the Fleet Air Arm after WW 11. He boasted to a colleague, flying a Spitfire Mk 25, that the Sea Fury was faster.
To settle the issue they both flew both aircraft in straight and level flight and, at the agreed signal, gave their aicraft full power. As he expected the Sea Fury pulled ahead of the Spitfire quite easily. 09/18/2001 @ 12:57 [ref: 3209] |
| C. Smith , AL | The Sea Fury was one of the last piston engined aircraft designed under the aegis of Sir Sydney camm, who later went on to design the VTOL P1127 resulting in the Hawker Harrier, and of course the Hunter, both beautiful to look at and to fly.
The Fury was the natural culmination of work on countless high-powered prop driven aircraft leading up to and during WWII, of which the Hurricane, Typhoon and Tempest were produced in large numbers. Effectively, the Sea Fury is a carrier-borne development based primarily on the success of the Hawker Tempest, which was considered by the RAF and Commonwealth allies to be the ultimate ground-attack and tactical support aircraft from D-Day onwards - easily comparable to the P-47 Thunderbolt. In Napier Sabre (up to 3150 hp installed, with an emergency rating significantly higher) powered format the thin wing Tempest was strong, very fast at low altitudes and considered the stablest gun platform one could wish for, with 4 20mm cannon and 8 60lb rockets. It sometimes destroyed 90% of a Wehrmacht\\\\\\\'s Division\\\\\\\'s armour in a few days, though not without losses operating at tree-top level. Having learnt a lot of lessons with the Typhoon and effectively amalgamated these lessons into the Tempest, the Fury and Sea Fury were almost certain to be superb aircraft, and they were. Many different powerplants had been tried and particularly cowling systems, some very innovative. The final Tempests adopted the 2,500 hp Bristol Centaurus twin row aircooled sleeve-valved radial engine, and although the Napier Sabre had finally become relaiable and extremely powerful (showing 4000 hp on the bench), the Centaurus Tempest was felt to be, on balance, a better all-round well balanced aircraft. Thus, this was the choice for the Sea Fury, and with a wing folding joint developed very carefully, it was born, but somwhat too late for service during WWII. It was used by several of the World\\\\\\\'s Air Forces including Israel\\\\\\\'s and India\\\\\\\'s as well as by the Royal Navy. It strong points points are excellent climb, roll-rate and structural integrity, Sir Sydney Camm\\\\\\\'s detail design influence being apparent in many areas. The bubble canopy, first introduced by the British and adopted almost universally is another plus point, as is of course the remarkable Bristol Centaurus engine, the culmination of over a decade\\\\\\\'s work on sleeve-valve aero engines, assisted by the the incomparable Sir Harry Ricardo. Its predecessor, the Bristol Hercules used in Stirlings, Halifaxes and some Lancasters achieved the remarkable overhaul life for a large aero-engine of 3,000 hours while rated at 1650 hp. Sleeve valved engines are generally much harder to production engineer than their poppet-valved equivalents, tending to make them more expensive. However, once mastered, the versatility of inlet/exhaust timing and simplicity and robustness in the cylinder head area allows better BMEP and hence SFC, higher boosts and lower overall weight. These engines also give a smaller frontal area than poppet valved designs and generally, can be less prone to flak damage. Overall, the combination of the highly refined Hawker airframe and this mature, powerful, yet simple engine result in a formidable package. Max. level speed in service was approx. 450-460 mph, but like the Tempest before it, the Sea Fury is one of the few piston-engined aircraft that were relatively unaffected by compressibility in the 500-550 mph speed range. 05/06/2001 @ 17:38 [ref: 2224] |
| Al Peterson , MB | In the Western Canada Aviation Museum in Winnipeg ,Manitoba there is a sleeve valve engine that is not only cut away but also fitted with a hand wheel so that you can turn it and watch the sleeve valves in operation. Some cars in the early years also had sleeve valves. I believe they were one of the Willys models from the 20's or 30's. Apparently they were more costly to manufacture and to hold to tight tolerances and also very expensive to overhaul. Again they were said to produce a lot of power for their displacement. 01/05/2001 @ 23:15 [ref: 1330] |
| Edward Zager , CA | Most engines have a set of valves (intake and exhaust)
that face the piston and are activated by pushrods. Know as poppet valves (sp?) they look something like one side of a dumb bell (with a nicer taper from the shaft to the head) Because of their position and shape, they need to be supported in a ring (the valve guide), and then this ring needs to have a set of supports that attach it to the cylinder. The sleeve valve engine in the Sea Fury has a cylinder, just like any other engine, but then the piston is placed inside a sleeve, and the piston/sleeve assemble is placed inside the cylinder. When the engine is running, the sleeve goes up and down in an oval pattern (if you looked at an individual point of the sleeve) The sleeve has a set of holes cut into it, so that when the engine is running the holes in the sleeve with align with another set of holes in the cylinder to perform the valving action. One of the problems of a conventional engine, is that you don't get a smooth airflow past the valves, because of the attachment to the cylinder needed to support the valve. The sleeve valve engine doesn't have anything to sticks in the airflow path into the cylinder, and so it "breathes" better. In a real world demonstration of this, a Centarus (sleeve valve) engined Sea Fury flying in cruise flight (about 240 -250 Knots) will burn about 60 GPH. If you fly an R3350 (poppet valve) engined Sea Fury in formation with a Centarus engined Sea Fury, you will see the R3350 engined Sea Fury burning 80 - 85 GPH. I don't know of any good book reference to point you to, because all of the books that I have looked at appear to have been written by people that never saw and actual sleeve valve engine. The best way I know of to see how a sleeve valve engine works, is to take one apart. 10/06/2000 @ 14:19 [ref: 860] |
| Lynn Erwin Jonesboro, AR | There is a Hawker Sea Fury flying this saturday September
30th, 2000 in Walnut Ridge Arkansas. Its the annual air show at a WWII airfield here in northeast Arkansas. This base was a disposal center where hundreds of fighter and bombers were cut up for scrap following WWII. The above mentioned Hawker is owned by a doctor in Memphis Tennessee, 100 miles to the east. He puts on quite a show, a perfect aircraft in every way. I watched it fly in Blytheville Arkansas earlier this year. Wish I could find out more about the engine on this aircraft. Seems I remember reading about it having a "sleeve valve" engine? Can anyone help me with this? A friend of mine is doing an article on the air show and this aircraft in particular, for the local newspaper and some more info on the powerplant would be appreciated. 09/28/2000 @ 23:10 [ref: 813] |
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