Are any of the Sea Furies being raced with the Centaurus engines? I thought they replaced them with modified R3350's where they use the power section of the turbo compounds less the power recovery turbines. I know an Australian group is trying to resurect a Centaurus to running order and having problems.
Wonder how they got the C.G. so screwed up on the Hermes? Enormous waste of cabin space. One would think that could have been corrected as mentioned with a cabin plug. Douglas certainly stretched the DC-4 fuselage enough through the DC-6 to DC-6A/B and DC-7 to DC-7C as did Lockheed did with the Constellation.
Also, the crash of the prototype Hermes as noted above eerily echos the crash of the prototype Avro Tudor where they crossed the aileron controls and killed the designer along with the crew.
So both of the Brits hopes for a four engined transport to compete with the Connies and DC-6 had crashes of the prototypes. I don't think the Tudor had a hope as a taildragger but the Hermes at least looked promising. The Britannia originally was to be Centaurus powered but went to the Proteus early on but strangely, went back to pistons in its reincarnation as the Argus at Canadair. And then regrew turboprops as the CL-44.