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Aviation History
1952
1952 - 0904.PDF
4<o FLIGHT A prototype of the Fairey Gannet, showing dispositions of the cockpits, retractable radome, and installation of the Armstrong Siddeley Double Mamba. CARREER- RO R IV E 1 1 T I - S I It M 1 If I A E usual development "snags," this courageous combination of a wholly new power plant with an equally new airframe has proved a harmonious one. The selection of the turboprop power plant was made primarily to conform with the Admiralty's policy of avoiding the storage of petrol aboard carriers, and the particular "double" configuration was dictated by the prohibitive rise in specific fuel consumption of a normal single-unit gas turbine with throttling: thus, in cruising flight one "half" of the Double Mamba is shut down while the other is run at a high (and therefore FOR the hunting and "killing" of submarines at sea a distinct new class of carrier-based aircraft is being evolved, and the machines which comprise it are sufficiently important to warrant separate consideration. They must be able to operate from the smaller classes of aircraft carrier, even in dirty weather, have a long endurance at low altitudes, provide for a crew of two to four, and be capacious enough to accommodate bulky and heavy detection equipment and special weapons. In no fixed-wing aircraft do these exacting requirements appear to have been met with more ingenuity and to better effect than in the three-seater Fairey Gannet, now in production for anti submarine squadrons of British Naval Aviation. The Gannet was literally designed around the Armstrong Siddeley Double Mamba turboprop, driving co-axial airscrews, and notwithstanding the Blackburn and General Aircraft V.B.1, a counterpart of the Fairey Gannet. The bomb bay of the Gannet may be contrasted with the external stores (250 lb depth charge and sonobuoys) seen below on a Firefly. Above Short S.B.3, with two Mamba turboprops. Mk. 7, showing a sonobuoy containers, R.P.s, Below is a Firefly radome and tank.
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