dwg
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The Bristol Type 162 Beaumont was a bomber derivative of the Beaufighter, using a new fuselage, originally intended to be attached to Beaufighter wings. Development began in 1940, growing out of earlier 1939 ideas for a Beau-bomber and through the Type 161, and despite the design growing to the point that a new wing and undercarriage design was needed, production was authorised in November 1940, with first flight expected summer-autumn 1941, which would likely have led to service entry in late-spring to summer 1942. Unfortunately requirement-creep set in and, faced with requirements now specifying higher speed, bombload and range than the Hercules engines could support, Bristol were forced to completely redesign the aircraft around the more powerful Centaurus engines, eventually leading to the Type 163 Buckingham, which turned out to be an almost complete failure - too late, too large, too lightly defended.
But if requirement-creep hadn't set in, the Type 162 Beaumont would actually have been an entirely acceptable replacement for the Blenheim, and it would have been available at an ideal point to play a major role in the CBI theatre.
The initial requirements called for the Beaumont to be capable of high-altitude bombing, dive-bombing, and close-support(in an alternate version replacing the ventral barbette and bomb-load with two forward-firing 20mm), but the latter two roles later disappeared, expected to be covered by the Vultee Vengeance and the Brewster Bermuda, however it is likely that the close-support role, at least, would have been reinstated in a production aircraft, as was seen in the alternative high-altitude and close-support versions of the Blenheim V.
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