Originally designed as a twelve-gun fighter, the Typhoon was intended to be the successor to the Hurricane. It suffered many development problems both with the airframe and its twenty-four cylinder Napier Sabre engine. At the time of its introduction in 1941, it was the first 400mph fighter in the RAF and proved a match for the low level tip-and-run Focke-Wulf Fw190s. It was, however, in the low level close support role that the Typhoon excelled. From August 1942 it began offensive sweeps over F