English Electric P.17 with trapezoidal wing podded engine layout drawn around October 1956.
P.17 as a podded delta dated about November 1956.
P.17 with trapezoid foreplanes and rear fuselage engines tunnel tested during December 1956 to February 1957.
The final tendered P.17 configuration arrived at in spring 1957.
The P.22 with weapons deployed, ready for launch. The deployment sequence was as follows: bomb bay rotates to expose weapons bay; trapeze lowers; weapon is launched; trapeze retracts; bomb bay rotates to closed position.
Had interceptor development been allowed to continue, three of the front-runners would have been the Fairey Delta 3 with Red Hebe missiles, and English Electric’s P.22 (with a rotary weapons bay) and P.23 Lightning derivative (with a mixed weapons load).
Rotatable bombbay sequence with various weapons loads. The rotary bomb bay proposed for the P.22 was based on a design invented and trademarked by the Glenn L. Martin company in the USA, which used the idea on its experimental three-engined bomber/ground-attack aircraft, the XB-51, although the type was never put into production.
