Fairey Barracuda, part two

Back in 1937 the British Air Ministry issued Specification S.24/37 for a monoplane torpedo-bomber which would satisfy the Operational Requirement OR.35. The envisioned aircraft was a three-seater with bot a high payload capacity and a high maximum speed. A total of six submissions were received by the Air Ministry and only two of them were accepted, those of Supermarine and their Type 322 and Fairey's one. Therefore a pair of prototypes of each design were ordered. On 7th December 1940 the first Fairey prototype flew for the first time, while its rival, the Supermarine Type 322 didn't get to the skies until 1943.
The Barracuda was a shoulder-wing cantilever monoplane with a retractable undercarriage and a non-retractable tail wheel.
The hydraulically-actuated main landing gear were "L"-shaped which retracted into a recess in the side of the fuselage and the wing, with the wheels within the wing. A flush arrestor hook was fitted directly ahead of the tail wheel. It had a crew of three, who seated in a tandem position under a continuous-glazed canopy. The pilot had a sliding canopy while the other two crew members' canopy was hinged. The two rear-crew had alternate locations in the fuselage, as the navigator's position had bay windows below the wings for downwards visibility. The wings were furnished with large Fairey-Youngman flaps which could also act as dive brakes.
Originally it was fitted with a conventional tail, but flight tests suggested that stability would be improved if the stabiliser was mounted higher, similar to a T-tail, an arrangement which was implemented on the second prototype. For carrier operations the wings could be folded back horizontally at the roots as the small vertical protrusions on the upper wingtips held hooks that attached to the tailplane.
The Barracuda was originally going to be powered by the Rolls-Royce Exe  X block, sleeve valve engine. However, as that engine was problematic and eventually abandoned, delaying the prototype's trials. It was decided instead to fit a lower-powered 12-cylinder Vee-type Rolls-Royce Merlin 30 engine rated at 1260 hp driving a three-bladed de Havilland propeller, which would be the configuration in which the prototypes would eventually flow. The experience gained from the prototype's flight testing, as well as the operations with the first production aircraft, denominated as Barracuda Mk.I, showed that the aircraft was underpowered. This was attributed to the weight of the many extra equipment introduced since the initial design phase. Just 23 machines of the Mk.I series were manufactured, 5 of them by Westland Aircraft, and all of them were used just for trials and conversion training.
The powerful flaps/airbrakes the aircraft was fitted with, became very appreciated among pilots, as the task of landing on an aircraft carrier was relatively straightforward thanks to a combination of the flaps and good visibility from the cockpit. Retracting the airbrakes at high speed while at the same time applying rudder, would cause a sudden change in trim, which could launch the aircraft into an inverted dive. Incidents like those occurrence proved fatal in, at least, five occasions during practice torpedo runs. However, once the problem was identified, appropriate pilot instructions were issued prior to the aircraft entering carrier service.

Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Barracuda
2. https://web.ipmsusa3.org/content/fairey-barracuda
3. Hall Park Books - Warpaint 35 - Fairey Barracuda