"Baby" Hawker Tempest I/Fury I with Merlin power?

[BarnOwlLover2]

I'm wondering what a fighter along the lines of the Tempest I or Fury I would've been like, but smaller and designed to use the Rolls-Royce Merlin instead of the Napier Sabre. I know that it'd be a good deal smaller to get similar performance specs, and all.

I'm bringing this up because of some of the performance specs I've read of various projects (XP-51F/G, A P-51B used by Rolls-Royce as a Merlin engine test bed, the proposed Merlin powered Mustang FTB, etc), as well as when I inquired about the Miles M23A interceptor, and that it was supposed to have wing mounted radiators similar to the Mosquito/Hornet, I instantly thought about a scaled down Tempest I or Fury I type fighter.

Anyone have any feelings or thoughts about this?

 

[Foo Fighter]

Fascinating to think it through though.

 

[GTX]

Not sure about a Merlin version but probably the closest you would get was the RR Griffon engined Fury:

 

[kaiserd]

The Fury was, in a very true sense, a cut down lighter-weight Tempest. It competed with and ultimately prevailed over rival “light weight” fighter designs from other UK firms.

And there were also paper Spitful variants with Merlin 130/131 (or at least relatively equivalent projected Merlin variants).

In reality the combination of jet fighters emerging and a reluctance to get too clever with the piston engined fighters that were being bought post-War (Spitfire variants, the Hornet in even more limited numbers) left no real room for a another (light weight) piston engined fighter. And when compared to a number of their UK and US contemporaries, including those that didn’t reach production, these Spitfires variants were not heavy-weights.

And during the war necessary expediences and limits on the available Merlin variants meant not a lot more could be realistically achieved than the later war Merlin-Spitfire Marks plus the Merlin-Mustang variants (which do appear to have had a significant impact on UK fighter plans). The more powerful lower front profile Merlin (130 and equivalents) just were not available at that time. And if it had been available during the War it probably would have gone into a Spitfire variant.

 

[famvburg]

The Fury was, in a very true sense, a cut down lighter-weight Tempest. It competed with and ultimately prevailed over rival “light weight” fighter designs from other UK firms.

And there were also paper Spitful variants with Merlin 130/131 (or at least relatively equivalent projected Merlin variants).

In reality the combination of jet fighters emerging and a reluctance to get too clever with the piston engined fighters that were being bought post-War (Spitfire variants, the Hornet in even more limited numbers) left no real room for a another (light weight) piston engined fighter. And when compared to a number of their UK and US contemporaries, including those that didn’t reach production, these Spitfires variants were not heavy-weights.

And during the war necessary expediences and limits on the available Merlin variants meant not a lot more could be realistically achieved than the later war Merlin-Spitfire Marks plus the Merlin-Mustang variants (which do appear to have had a significant impact on UK fighter plans). The more powerful lower front profile Merlin (130 and equivalents) just were not available at that time. And if it had been available during the War it probably would have gone into a Spitfire variant.

Even tho you’re asking about a non Sabre powered Fury, the prototype powered by a Sabre was among the fastest and may have been the fastest fury version.

 

[royabulgaf]

Any plans or drawings of the Merlin Spiteful? All I could find was Supermarine kicking around a Spiteful winged Mk VIII, but it sounds like something in the MkIV MKXX MK23 soup.