Very nice work, celt. Hairy stick or otherwise, that paint scheme looks great on the Wyvern.
...which gives me to think:
if the USN had bought the Wyvern, what would they have designated it as? With that paint job (and, of course, the era in which the Wyvern was made), they would still be using the pre-1962 scheme. Now, the Wyvern in RN service was either a TF (torpedo fighter) or an S (Strike) type, which in USN parlance of the day would have been... TB or A --
not S, because that's an anti-submarine designation for them.
The manufacturer's code letter could be anything, as there are many examples of duplication, not least because there have been considerably more than 26 manufacturers over the years. That being the case, and since there are none of the major planemakers using the letter, let's say it was W (for Westland). The Wyvern would have been the first aircraft the USN bought from Westland, so no number would have been allocated, hence that rather nice example of whiffery and a CBK may be declared by authorial
fiat to be a
TBW or an
AW Wyvern -- possibly both, as some types (
e.g., the Vought Corsair) had more than one designation even when made by the same manufacturer (in the case of the Corsair, Vought-made aircraft were mostly F4Us, but some for the USMC were AUs).
So there you go -- you've added a little alternate history to the Wyvern and the US Navy, and it looks good, too.
