Fairey's Growler; the Big Firefly.
The first Rolls-Royce Griffon engined aeroplane I saw flying was the Royal Navy Historic Flight's Fairey Firefly many years ago. The Griffon has a distinctive growl to it; quite unmistakeable and somewhat brutish compared to the Merlin and Allison V-1710, and this made an impression on me. Therefore, I have something of a fondness for Fairey's big two-seat striker, the Firefly. Although bestowed a somewhat dainty name, the Firefly is anything but. It's a big machine and it oozes presense in person. Its origins lie with a pre-World War Two specification, N.8/39 released in August 1939 for a two-seat aircraft carrier based fighter. Fairey's previous designer, Belgian Marcelle Lobelle had left by the time work began on the aeroplane and Henry 'Charlie' Chaplin, taking cues from Lobelle's two-seat fighter the Fulmar, began from scratch. Although Fairey's entry to the N.8/39 specification was originally deemed 'unimpressive', after some revision of preferences with the onset of war by the Royal Navy, in February 1940 revised specification N.5/40 was released to Fairey to build 200 of its Griffon engined variant of the paper fighter. So, the Firefly became the first aeroplane put into production to be powered by the big 36 litre V-12 engine. First flying on 22 December 1941, the Firefly's subsequent career was long and action packed, seeing combat in two major and several regional conflicts and equipping eight foreign countries' armed forces, three of those at sea. It is one of those whose Firefly I captured a walkaround of, AS.6 WJ109 of the Royal Australian Navy on display at the Fleet Air Arm Museum, Nowra, New South Wales. The AS.6 was a specific anti-submarine variant of the FR.5, which first flew in 1947; both types saw sterling service aboard carriers with the Royal Navy and Royal Australian Navy during the Korean War. The AS.6 can be visually identified by the absence of wing mounted forward firing cannon, compared to the FR.5. Click on the image to go to the Firefly page.
