Westland Whirlwind

The Westland Whirlwind was the RAF’s first single-seat twin-engined fighter, and the first armed with a concentrated battery of four 20 mm cannon in the nose. First flown in 1938, it was fast and heavily armed at low altitude, but it was tied to the Rolls-Royce Peregrine engine, whose development was abandoned in favour of the Merlin — leaving the Whirlwind without a growth engine and limiting production to just 116 aircraft. Only two squadrons, Nos. 263 and 137, flew it operationally, increasingly as a fighter-bomber (the “Whirlibomber”) on cross-Channel strikes against shipping, trains and airfields until it was withdrawn in 1943.