The Hawker Fury was a British biplane fighter aircraft used by the Royal Air Force in the 1930s. It was originally named the Hornet and was the counterpart to the Hawker Hart light bomber.
The Fury was the RAF's first operational fighter aircraft to be able to exceed 200 mph (322 km/h) in level flight. It had highly sensitive controls which gave it superb aerobatic performance. It was designed partly for the fast interception of bombers and to that end it had a climb rate of almost 2,400 ft/min (730 m/min, powered by a 525 hp/391 kW Kestrel engine).
The Fury I entered squadron service with the RAF in May 1931, re-equipping No. 43 Squadron. Owing to financial limitations owing to the Great Depression, only relatively small numbers of Fury Is were ordered, the type equipping only two more squadrons, 1 and 25 Squadrons. At the same time, the slower Bristol Bulldog equipped ten fighter squadrons. The Fury II entered service in 1936-1937, increasing total number of squadrons to six. Furies remained with the RAF Fighter Command until January 1939, replaced primarily with Gloster Gladiators, and other types, such as Hawker Hurricane. After their front line service ended, they continued to be used for training purposes.
Three Furies were ordered by Spain in 1935, it being intended to produce another 50 under licence. The Spanish variant had a cantilever undercarriage design with Dowty internally-sprung wheels, similar to that used on the Gladiator, and was powered by a 612 hp (457 kW) Hispano Suiza 12Xbr engine, reaching a speed 234 mph (377 km/h). The three Furies were delivered without armament on 11 July 1936, just before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. They were taken into service by the Spanish Republican Air Force, being fitted with machine guns scrounged from crashed aircraft. One Fury made a forced landing behind enemy lines due to a lack of fuel and was repaired by the Nationalists, although it was not used operationally, while the Republicans used two of the Furies in the defence of Madrid until wrecked in a crash in November 1936.
30 ex-RAF Furies were also used by the South African Air Force against the Italian forces in Italian East Africa and Lybia in 1941, and despite their obsolescence, destroyed 2 Caproni bombers as well as strafing many airfields, destroying fighters and bombers on the ground.
Designer at Hawker, Sidney Camm, designed a monoplane version of the Fury in 1933. It was not developed until the Rolls-Royce developed what was to become their famous Merlin engine. The design was then revised according to Air Ministry specification F5/34 to become the prototype Hawker Hurricane.
(Source: Wikipedia on line and Revista Fach #136 and #137, 1975 (Chilean Air Force magazine)).
General characteristics
Crew: One
Length: 26 ft 9 in (8.15 m)
Wingspan: 30 ft 0 in (9.14 m)
Height: 10 ft 2 in (3.10 m)
Wing area: 250 ft² (23.2 m²)
Empty weight: 2,734 lb (1,240 kg)
Loaded weight: 3,609 lb (1,637 kg)
Powerplant: 1 × Rolls-Royce Kestrel IV V12 engine, 640 hp (477 kW)
Performance
Maximum speed: 223 mph at 16,500 ft (360 km/h at 5,030 m)
Range: 270 mi (435 km)
Service ceiling: 29,500 ft (8,990 m)
Rate of climb: 2,600 ft/min (13.2 m/s)
Wing loading: 14.4 lb/ft² (21.5 kg/m²)
Power/mass: 0.177 hp/lb (0.291kW/kg)
Armament
Guns: 2 × 0.303 in (7.7 mm) Vickers Mk IV machine guns
Provision for light bomb racks under the wings
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Based on FS98/Chris Lampard original.
Reworked to CFS, with new air file, up-scaled, damage profile, and new BMP textures by Edmundo Abad, 2012
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This virtual model represent a Hawker Fury MK I, Republican Air Force, Spanish Civil War, 1936.
This virtual model is up-scaled to obtain a better view in Combat Flight Simulator.
(for accurate scale in FS98, replace the file Spanfury.mdl by Spanfury.old.mdl and rename this as Spanfury.mdl)
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Installation FS98/CFS
1. Unzip to Temporaly directory "Fury-sp".
2. Copy "Fury-sp" folder to X:\CFS\aircraft directory.
3. Copy "gauges" folder to X:\CFS\gauges directory.
