Westland Wendover; WHAT THE…..

November 11, 2020

Looking like the bastard love child of a Lysander and a Lancaster bomber, the Westland Wendover is one of the stranger designs to be dreamed up by British aero engineers during World War Two. Only built as a prototype, the Wendover was a development of the Westland Lysander.

This aircraft would perform excellent work for covert operations, flying agents into occupied France during World War Two, but truth be told it was not very successful in it’s designed role as the Royal Air Force’s primary army cooperation aircraft. Intended to be used for artillery spotting and for dropping supplies and messages to ground units, the Lysander suffered heavily during the Battle of France in the face of Luftwaffe fighters.

Slow and steady, it was pretty much a sitting duck. In the two months of May and June of 1940, 118 were lost over France or Belgium out of the 175 deployed.

Obviously something needed to be done and Westland figured that the solution might be…

MORE GUNS!

So they merged the front half of a Lysander with a broad-beamed twin tail that mounted a power-operated Nash & Thompson turret armed with four .303 browning machine guns. Certainly enough to give any German attacker a nasty surprise.

First flying in July 1941, the aircraft was reported to handle well and was comparable to the standard Lysander.

However with bigger priorities for aircraft production no orders were placed. The RAF recognised that achieving air superiority was a better use of scant resources than investing in aircraft that would still be pretty vulnerable. Plus the Brits had soured a bit to the turret fighter concept, leaving the Wendover as just an odd side note in the history of aircraft.

Reinventing the Wing; The Aircraft of Alexander Graham Bell

Reinventing the Wing; The Aircraft of Alexander Graham Bell

When the Wright brothers made the first heavier-than-air manned flight in 1903, the world was amazed. Well, mainly. Because there were quite a few people out there who had been working on the problem for some time, and some of those saw that first flight at Kitty Hawk...

Russia Sending T-55s to Ukraine?

Russia Sending T-55s to Ukraine?

Back in December 2020 I wrote about how Saudi-led forces in Yemen were using ancient T-34 tanks in combat. In that I pointed out that tanks, even ones as old as the World War Two T-34, could be useful in combat still…if they could be made to operate and didn’t...

Rockwell XFV-12; The VTOL Fighter That Couldn’t

Rockwell XFV-12; The VTOL Fighter That Couldn’t

The 1970s were a time of great introspection for the US military services. In the light of the draw down of the Vietnam conflict and the final abandoning of the country, the services had to contend with severe issues in funding and personnel quality. And they had to...

USAF Drone Bought Down by Russian Air Force

USAF Drone Bought Down by Russian Air Force

Well, after the “Great Balloon Turkey Shot” of last month it seems the Russians have decided to get in on the action. At around 8AM local time on 14 March, a United States Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone had to crash land in the Black Sea after being bodily struck on the...

The MiG 1.44/1.42; Mikoyan’s DIY “What-If?”

The MiG 1.44/1.42; Mikoyan’s DIY “What-If?”

The Cold War saw a whole host of technological advances take place, particularly (and not really surprisingly) in military fields. And fighter aircraft were one of the key places that the respective competitors poured huge amounts of resources and capital, leading to...