On July 20th it will be seventy years since Neville Duke made the
first
flight of the prototype Hunter, WB188, from Boscombe Down.
Painted pale
‘duck-egg’ green all over with outsize wing roundels this
aerodynamically clean aeroplane was generally considered to be
outstandingly beautiful and still looks so today as recorded by Cyril
Peckham’s stunning black-and-white photographs taken for the 1951 SBAC
show at Farnborough. WB188 when converted to Mk3 standard and painted
red took the World Absolute Speed Record flown by Neville Duke off
Littlehampton at 727.6 mph on September 7th 1953; twelve days later
Duke also took the 100 km Closed Circuit World Speed Record at 709.2
mph.
The Hunter entered RAF service with the Central Fighter
Establishment (CFE) at West Raynham, followed by No.43 Squadron at
Leuchars, in 1954 and was still in front-line RAF service in 1969.
Thereafter it continued to serve in numerous second line support and
training roles for both the RAF until 1994 and the Royal Navy until
1999.
Seventy years on there are still fifteen Hunters
carrying UK
Ministry of Defence serial numbers operated from RAF Scampton by Hawker
Hunter Aviation under contract to the UK MoD and other customers.
Similar companies in the USA, Canada and France have another 38. The
‘Existing Hunters Database’ at ‘Hawker Hunters Reborn’ lists 158 other
survivors of which 28 are reported as ‘airworthy’.
Altogether 1,972 Hunters were built of which 542
were rebuilt by
the company and sold to overseas customers. Counting second rebuilds
and those done by Contractor’s Working Parties and by RAF Maintenance
Unit’s the total is 695. New-build and rebuilt Hunters served with 21
air arms world-wide, many being passed on to other countries.
Project work on what would become the P.1067 started at Hawker in
1946, the design using the new Rolls-Royce AJ 65 (Avon) axial flow gas
turbine. It was a swept wing aircraft with a nose intake and fin tip
mounted tailplane following the RAE-promoted layout devised at
Focke-Wulf by Hans Multhopp (see The Fall of Icarus by Mike Pryce in
Newsletter 59) and armed with two 30 mm Aden guns.
In 1948 Hawker was invited to tender the P.1067 to Specification F.3/48 by which time the tailplane had become swept. Soon the nose intake was split and moved to the wing roots to simplify the design of the front fuselage for four Aden guns and a radar rangefinder, and the tailplane was moved down the fin following wind tunnel work. Apart from the later addition of a fin-tailplane junction bullet fairing, an under-fuselage air brake, 30 mm belt link collector tanks (‘Sabrinas’) and saw-tooth wing leading edges this was the shape of the Hunter we know today.
There were of course changes to systems, engines and armament as development problems (particularly with Avon surging during gun firing) were solved, and capabilities and performance were enhanced over the lifetime of the aircraft as the emphasis changed from interceptor to multi-purpose fighter and ground attack; not forgetting the side-by-side two seat trainer.
The Hunter is an aircraft of which all who worked for or with Hawker and Hawker Siddeley can be proud . It would be nice to be able to record the names of Hawker Association Members who were part of the original design team or were involved in the early flight development work. Please let the Editor know.