Quote:
Originally Posted by boosed
Thanks for this additional info and website, Charlie. Very interesting. It also occurs to me that the nature of the Vulture and Sabre engines and their cooling systems led to airframes with fairly broad cross sections in the firewall area that were thus more easily and gracefully adapted to radial engines than were the Ki-61 and the D4Y1/2.
Don
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I could be accused of gratuitous thread hijack but....
The Sabre engine wasn't all that big - beside a Merlin it's smaller but boxier (if that makes sense) - I've never seen a Vulture engine but I'd guess it would be voluminous. I think the Hawker idea was that the airframe had to be capable of handling very high engine power (some of the late Sabres were rated over 3000 hp) so it was big and solid - P-47 style.
Regards,
Charlie