Five firms compete, but prototypes arrive years late

Fairey, Blackburn, Hawker, Westland, and Supermarine all offered designs, while Bristol appears to have conducted a study that left little surviving trace. Some paper projects disappeared into other work or were quietly discouraged before a formal submission, making the competition harder to reconstruct than a simple list suggests. Engine commonality and the logistical cost of introducing another powerplant could be enough to end an idea before a hard rejection. Fairey's Type 100 and Supermarine's Type 322 advanced to prototype construction, but wartime policy concentrated manufacturers on aircraft whose jigs and production lines already existed. The Type 322 did not fly until 1943, while the Fairey design lost its intended Rolls-Royce X engine and required redesign. Against a normal two-to-three-year path from specification to service, both prototypes demonstrate how a 1938 requirement expected to yield a 1941 aircraft instead became a wartime catch-up program.