It was the fastest fighter at low level in the Royal Air Force inventory, faster than the Spitfire below 15,000 feet. It carried four 20mm cannons in its nose — twice the firepower of any other British fighter. It first flew in October 1938 and entered service in mid-1940, just in time for the Battle of Britain.

The Westland Whirlwind should have been a legend. Instead, only 116 were ever built, just two squadrons flew it operationally, and it was withdrawn from service in 1943 — destroyed not by the Luftwaffe but by the engine its own manufacturer abandoned.

Faster Than a Spitfire — Down Low

Petter’s design — Westland’s W.K. “Teddy” Petter, the engineer who would later design the Lightning — was extraordinary for 1938. The Whirlwind had a thin laminar-flow wing, all-metal stressed-skin construction, an enclosed cockpit, and four cannons clustered in the nose where they could not be misaligned by wing flexion at high speed. The aircraft hit 360 mph at 15,000 feet on just 1,770 horsepower — a power-to-speed ratio that no Spitfire of its era could match.

It was also pleasant to fly. Whirlwind pilots reported the controls were light, the visibility excellent, and the aircraft surprisingly stable as a gun platform. The cannons hit hard. Twice during 1941 a single Whirlwind shot down two Bf 109s in one engagement.

The Engine That Killed It

The Whirlwind needed two engines for its layout. Petter chose the Rolls-Royce Peregrine, a development of the older Kestrel engine, because Rolls-Royce promised a steady supply. Then the Battle of Britain happened. Rolls-Royce decided every available engineer should be working on the Merlin — the engine that powered the Spitfire and the Hurricane. The Peregrine programme was orphaned.

By 1942 the Peregrine had stopped production altogether. The 116 Whirlwinds in service had no source of replacement engines. Every time one was lost, the airframe was scrapped because there were no engines to put in another. The aircraft was, in the cruel words of one Air Ministry memo, “a death sentence on a finite stockpile.”

Could It Have Been Re-Engined?

Yes. Petter himself proposed a Merlin-powered Whirlwind II in 1941 — the same airframe with two Merlin XX engines instead of two Peregrines. The Whirlwind II would have been roughly 10 percent faster than the Spitfire Mk V at all altitudes, with twice the firepower and twice the range. Air Ministry studies confirmed it would have been a transformative aircraft.

The Air Ministry said no. Production capacity was needed for Spitfires and Hurricanes. Westland’s factory was redirected to license-build Spitfires. The Whirlwind II was never built. By 1943 the surviving Whirlwinds were retired from front-line service.

No Survivors

Not a single complete Whirlwind survives. Two airframes are under long-term restoration in private collections in Britain, but neither is yet airworthy. Most of what exists today is wreckage, fragments, and the design drawings that show, with painful clarity, exactly what the RAF threw away.

It is one of aviation history’s most poignant footnotes — the fastest, hardest-hitting British fighter of 1940, killed not by combat but by the bureaucratic decision to abandon its engine. A reminder that even great aircraft are hostage to their suppliers.

Sources: Imperial War Museum, Westland Aircraft Heritage Museum, RAF Air Historical Branch.