RAF Germany and the late Cold War

The Jaguar was born as an Anglo-French trainer and grew into a strike aircraft. SEPECAT, a partnership of Breguet and the British Aircraft Corporation, built it with two Adour turbofans, a shoulder wing and a stalky undercarriage strong enough for rough strips. The first prototype flew in September 1968.

Pilots joked that the Jaguar needed the curvature of the Earth to get airborne on a hot day.

XX824 flew as “AD” with No. 14 Squadron at RAF Brüggen in West Germany in the mid-1980s and is preserved in those colours at the RAF Museum London: wraparound Dark Green and Dark Sea Grey, with the squadron’s white bars and blue diamonds beside the intake roundels.

The Harrier began with an engine. Bristol’s Pegasus turbofan exhausted through four rotating nozzles, so the same thrust could lift the aircraft straight up or push it forward. Hawker built the P.1127 around it and made the first tethered hover in October 1960.

Harrier pilots could “viff”, vectoring thrust in forward flight to brake or turn in ways no conventional fighter could.

XZ133 is displayed in AirSpace at IWM Duxford in its 1982 configuration with No. 1(F) Squadron: wraparound Dark Green and Dark Sea Grey, red and blue roundels, and the red code 10 on the fin.

The Admiralty wanted a carrier aircraft that could cross the sea at wave-top height, below the radar of the day, and hit a ship with a nuclear weapon or a conventional load. Blackburn’s answer, the NA.39, first flew on 30 April 1958. It had a small, thick, strong wing, a fuselage shaped to the area rule, and a bomb bay whose door rotated to carry the weapons in the belly.

The Buccaneer’s “area ruled” waist and blown wing let it fly fast and low with a heavy load while still landing slowly on a carrier deck.

XN974 is a Buccaneer S.2 preserved at the Yorkshire Air Museum at Elvington, near York.

In the late 1960s the RAF needed one aircraft to replace both the Gnat, its advanced trainer, and the Hunter, on which pilots learned weapons and tactics. Hawker Siddeley at Kingston answered with the HS.1182: a low-wing, tandem-seat jet with a single Rolls-Royce Turbomeca Adour turbofan, the engine of the Jaguar, and the instructor’s seat raised behind the pupil’s so that both had a clear view ahead. In 1971 the RAF ordered 175 off the drawing board, with no prototype, and the first aircraft, XX154, first flew from Dunsfold on 21 August 1974 with Duncan Simpson at the controls.

The RAF bought the Hawk without a prototype: the first aircraft to fly, XX154, was ordered as a production machine and used for development flying, and it is preserved at Boscombe Down.

XX308, construction number 143/312133, was delivered to the RAF on 23 April 1980 and later modified to T.1A standard.

The Puma was designed by Sud Aviation in the early 1960s to give the French Army a medium transport helicopter that could carry a section of troops in any weather. Two Turbomeca Turmo turboshafts sat side by side on the cabin roof, driving a four-bladed main rotor, with the tail rotor on the starboard side of the boom and the main wheels retracting into sponsons on the cabin sides. The prototype SA 330 first flew on 15 April 1965.

The Puma came to the RAF through the 1967 Anglo-French helicopter agreement, the same deal that produced the Gazelle and the Westland Lynx.

XW222 was one of the RAF’s 48 Westland-assembled Puma HC.1s, delivered in the early 1970s.

Sud Aviation designed the Gazelle in the mid-1960s to replace its piston-engined Alouette II, using a Turbomeca Astazou turboshaft, a streamlined fuselage with a large glazed cabin and a three-bladed main rotor. The first prototype, the SA 340, flew on 7 April 1967 with a conventional tail rotor borrowed from the Alouette II. In 1968 the second prototype was given the feature that made the type famous: a fenestron, a small many-bladed fan turning inside a duct in the fin.

The Gazelle was the first helicopter to fly with a fenestron, a tail rotor of thirteen blades spinning inside a duct in the fin, which is safer for people on the ground and quieter than an open rotor.

XW855 was built by Westland as a Gazelle HT.3 and issued to the RAF on 31 July 1973, flying to Ternhill that August to train helicopter pilots with the Central Flying School.