Westland VTOL convertiplane projects

[hesham]

From Air Pictorial 6/1969

 

[hesham]

From Air Force magazine 1969,

it's first time to know that,Japan co-operated in designing WE01 ?.

 

[Grey Havoc]

It may be more accurate to say that Japan was interested in a licensed produced development of the design.

 

[Jason Dykstra (Wyvern)]

Were any of these offered to the RAF or RN or were these strictly civil types?

 

[hesham]

From Interavia 1969.

 

[TsrJoe]

Bristol Convertible proposals from a paper by R. Hafner, Nov/Dec. 1964

 

[Jezzmundo]

Aircraft Engineering Sept 1968

Could this be WG.21?

If it was ever considered as an option for the WSRA studies as WG.21 then the Company archive has little information to support that view. The WSRA project was to investigate a VTOL configuration that would be able to achieve fixed wing ground attack fighter speeds approaching 500 kts. What I can say is that we have a presentation slide image that shows various cockpit configurations and one of those is for a "Bronco" style approach. No other information was submitted under cover of the contract but if one assumes that the "Bronco" style cockpit was matched with "Bronco" like maximum speeds then the image shown may have been an option considered early but never followed through. Out of interest Warton and Kingston both submitted concepts for the same requirement at the same time.

Aircraft Engineering Sept 1968

Could this be WG.21?

Well now, a small niggle in my head eventually matured as a need to take a look at artwork that was prepared for the 2023 Henson and Stringfellow lecture, held in Yeovil, on the topic of the modern tilt rotor. This confirms that a derivative of WE.01 was drawn as a ground attack craft and it is essentially this aircraft. It is not WG.21 and has no link to that study. Further, I do not believe that much/any detailed analysis was done and we certainly don't have any such background data in the archive. it is shown having an expected maximum speed of 330 kts. There were a number of derivatives of the WE.01 demonstrator developed but none were clearly separated by an identifier. All I can offer is that the configuration shown was derived from WE.01 and would have assumed re-use of rotors, gearboxes and engines.