Learning to fly: RAF trainers

The Tiger Moth grew out of de Havilland’s DH.60 Moth. To let the instructor in the front seat bail out wearing a parachute, the upper wing’s centre section was moved forward, clear of the front cockpit, and the wings were swept back slightly to keep the balance right. The first DH.82 flew at Stag Lane on 26 October 1931, and the RAF ordered it as an elementary trainer the following year.

The swept-back wings were not for speed: they balanced the aircraft after the upper centre section was moved forward so the front-seat occupant could escape by parachute.

T6296 was built by Morris Motors at Cowley in 1941 and taught RAF pupils at No. 1 Elementary Flying Training School at Hatfield and No. 7 EFTS at Desford.

In the mid-1930s the RAF taught its pilots on biplanes, while the fighters they would go on to fly were becoming monoplanes. F. G. Miles of Phillips & Powis at Woodley, near Reading, had already built the Hawk Trainer, a two-seat version of his light Hawk monoplane, and the Air Ministry wrote specification T.40/36 around a militarised version of it. The prototype M.14, flown by Miles on 20 March 1937, was a low-wing monoplane built of spruce and plywood, with tandem open cockpits, flaps, a fixed undercarriage and a 130 hp de Havilland Gipsy Major I. It gave pupils the feel of a monoplane, flaps and all, before they moved on to the Harvard, the Master and then the Hurricane and Spitfire.

The Magister was the RAF’s first monoplane trainer, but it was built almost entirely of wood: a spruce and plywood airframe in an age that was turning to metal.

P6382 was built by Phillips & Powis at Woodley in 1939 and served with the RAF as an elementary trainer.

Stearman Aircraft of Wichita, Kansas, was already a subsidiary of Boeing when its engineers built the Model 70 as a private venture in 1933: a sturdy two-seat biplane trainer with open tandem cockpits, a welded steel-tube fuselage, fabric-covered wooden wings and a wide-track undercarriage that forgave a student’s heavy landings. The prototype first flew on 1 January 1934. The US Navy ordered 61 as the NS-1 that year, and the US Army Air Corps followed in 1936 with the PT-13, powered by a Lycoming R-680 radial.

The name Kaydet is a play on “cadet”, the young trainee pilots who flew it, and was first given to the type by the Royal Canadian Air Force.

The Imperial War Museum’s Kaydet hangs from the roof of the American Air Museum at Duxford.

North American Aviation’s NA-16 first flew on 1 April 1935 and became the pattern for a long line of advanced trainers. A low-wing monoplane with a Wasp radial, a framed greenhouse canopy over two tandem cockpits and a retractable undercarriage, it taught pupils the habits of a fast, heavy fighter before they ever flew one. The RAF ordered it as the Harvard and the first arrived in 1938.

The Harvard’s propeller tips can reach supersonic speed in a dive or at full power, which is what gives the aircraft its distinctive snarl.

FE905 was built by Noorduyn in Montreal in 1943 as a Harvard IIB for the Royal Canadian Air Force.

Airspeed based the Oxford on its Envoy, a small twin-engined airliner, to meet an Air Ministry specification for a multi-engined trainer. It was a low-winged wooden monoplane with a retractable undercarriage, flaps and a cabin for a pilot, a navigator or bomb aimer and a wireless operator or gunner. The prototype, L4534, first flew at Portsmouth on 19 June 1937, and the Central Flying School received the first Oxfords that November.

Amy Johnson was killed in an Oxford in January 1941, while ferrying one for the Air Transport Auxiliary; it came down in the Thames Estuary.

V3388 was built by de Havilland in 1940 and, after a spell in storage, had an uneventful wartime career.

The Chipmunk was the first aircraft designed by de Havilland’s Canadian company. Its chief designer, the Polish engineer Wsiewołod Jakimiuk, drew a neat all-metal, low-winged two-seater with a tailwheel and a sliding canopy to replace the Tiger Moth, and the prototype first flew at Downsview, Toronto, on 22 May 1946.

The RAF took delivery of 740 Chipmunk T.10s in just four years, between November 1949 and October 1953.

WP962 was built at Broughton in 1952 and stood in the line of training aircraft at the Coronation Review at Odiham in July 1953.

After the war the RAF wanted a basic trainer that behaved more like the fast aircraft its pupils would go on to fly than the old Tiger Moth did. Percival’s P.56 Provost, which first flew on 24 February 1950, was a stout low-wing monoplane with a large radial engine, a tailwheel undercarriage and a roomy cockpit where pupil and instructor sat side by side.

The Provost’s cockpit canopy and glass are so wide because pupil and instructor sit side by side, which let the instructor watch the pupil’s hands as well as the view ahead.

WV562 is a Provost T.1 that served with No. 22 Flying Training School, wearing the code “P-C”, and was later kept as an instructional airframe with the maintenance serial 7606M.

W. E. W. Petter designed the Gnat at Folland as a small, cheap lightweight fighter around the Bristol Saturn engine. When that engine was cancelled, the Gnat flew on 18 July 1955 with the smaller Bristol Orpheus. The RAF did not want it as a fighter, but India bought it, and Indian Gnats earned the nickname ‘Sabre Slayer’ against Pakistan’s F-86s.

The Gnat T.1 was small enough that the Red Arrows flew it in tight formation with a span of only 7.3 metres, and the whole team was painted red to stand out against the sky.

XR977 is a Gnat T.1 on show at the Royal Air Force Museum in London.

The Bulldog began at Beagle Aircraft at Shoreham as the B.125, a military trainer developed from the company’s Pup light aircraft. Beagle kept the Pup’s general layout, a low wing and a fixed tricycle undercarriage, but gave the trainer a stronger, fully aerobatic airframe, a 200 hp Lycoming flat-four, a wider cabin seating instructor and pupil side by side under a sliding bubble canopy, and hardpoints under the wings. The prototype first flew on 19 May 1969, and Sweden became the first customer, for its air force and army.

Unlike the Chipmunk it replaced, the Bulldog sat instructor and pupil side by side, so the instructor could watch the student’s hands and instruments directly.

XX654, construction number 312, was built by Scottish Aviation at Prestwick in 1974 as one of the RAF’s Bulldog Series 120s and delivered to Church Fenton on 1 November that year.

The 125 was the last de Havilland type to fly. The company drew it up at Hatfield as the DH.125 Jet Dragon, a small business jet with a low swept wing, a cabin for six to eight passengers and two Bristol Siddeley Viper turbojets mounted on the rear fuselage, clear of the cabin and the wing. The prototype, G-ARYA, first flew from Hatfield on 13 August 1962.

The Dominie took its name from the Second World War navigation trainer version of the de Havilland Dragon Rapide, so the RAF taught navigators in two de Havilland Dominies a quarter of a century apart.

XS709 was built at Hawarden, near Chester, and on 30 December 1964 it became the first Dominie to fly; on 30 March 1965 it became the first to be delivered to the RAF.

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.