The Fleet Air Arm

Fairey built the Swordfish as a private venture, the TSR II, a torpedo, spotter and reconnaissance biplane for the Fleet Air Arm developed from an earlier design that had crashed in 1933. The prototype first flew on 17 April 1934, and the Admiralty ordered it into production as the Swordfish. It was a fabric-covered two-bay biplane of steel and light alloy with a Bristol Pegasus radial, open cockpits for a pilot, an observer and a telegraphist air gunner, and wings that folded back beside the fuselage for stowage aboard ship.

The Swordfish outlasted its intended replacement: the Fairey Albacore left front-line service before it did, and Swordfish were still flying operationally when the war in Europe ended.

W5856 was built by Blackburn at Sherburn-in-Elmet and first flew on 21 October 1941.

R. J. Mitchell designed the Walrus at Supermarine as a private venture, a small amphibian that warships could launch from a catapult to scout and spot for their guns. It grew out of the company’s earlier Seagull biplanes but had a single-step light-alloy hull, retractable main wheels and wings that folded back beside the hull. The Bristol Pegasus radial sat in a nacelle between the wings, driving a pusher propeller, and the whole aircraft was stressed to be catapulted with a full load.

The Walrus was the first British squadron aircraft with a retractable main undercarriage, completely enclosed crew accommodation and an all-metal fuselage, and the first amphibian to be catapulted from a ship with a full military load.

L2301 was built by Supermarine and delivered to the Irish Air Corps in March 1939 as N18, one of three Walruses used for coastal patrols during the Emergency; it suffered an engine failure and was damaged in a ditching on its delivery flight.

Grumman of Bethpage, Long Island, had supplied the US Navy with stubby biplane fighters through the 1930s. Its first monoplane fighter, the XF4F-2, flew on 2 September 1937 but lost the Navy’s 1938 competition to the Brewster Buffalo. Grumman rebuilt it with a two-stage supercharged Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp, a larger wing and a squared-off tail, and in August 1939 the Navy ordered it as the F4F-3.

The Martlet I was ordered by France, and Britain inherited all 81 when France fell before any had been delivered.

AL246 was one of the G-36As built for the French Navy in 1940 and taken over by Britain after the fall of France.

The Royal Navy believed a fighter flying far out over the sea needed a second man aboard to navigate and work the radio, and its first eight-gun monoplane fighter, the Fairey Fulmar of 1940, had one. The Fulmar was sturdy but slow, and in 1940 the Admiralty drew up specification N.5/40 for a faster successor. H. E. Chaplin’s team at Fairey designed a stressed-skin low-winged monoplane round the new Rolls-Royce Griffon, with the radiator under the nose, the observer in a separate cockpit behind the wing, four 20 mm Hispano cannon, and wings that folded back by hand for stowage below deck.

In July 1945 Fireflies of the British Pacific Fleet became the first British-built aircraft to fly over Tokyo.

Z2033 was built by Fairey in 1944 as a Firefly I. In 1945 it joined No. 731 Naval Air Squadron at East Haven, near Dundee, which taught pilots to land on carriers, until a taxiing accident sent it back to Fairey for repair.

The Sea Hawk began as Hawker’s P.1040, a straight-winged jet fighter built round the Rolls-Royce Nene engine, which first flew on 2 September 1947. Sydney Camm’s team gave it a short fuselage by splitting the jet pipe in two and venting it through slots in the trailing edges of the wing roots, so that the engine could sit well back without a long tailpipe, and the air intakes were set in the wing roots as well.

The Sea Hawk’s jet exhaust leaves through two slots in the wing roots, so the fuselage behind the cockpit could be kept short and the tail clear of the hot gases.

WV797 is a Sea Hawk FGA.6 built by Armstrong Whitworth and flown by the Royal Navy.

The Venom began as a Vampire with a bigger engine. de Havilland fitted the twin-boom layout with the more powerful Ghost and a new, thinner wing swept back along its leading edge, and at first called it the Vampire FB.8. By the time John Derry flew the prototype at Hatfield on 2 September 1949 it had become the DH.112 Venom, and it was a good deal faster and higher-flying than the aircraft it grew from.

Switzerland’s licence-built Venoms outlasted the RAF’s by more than twenty years: the last were retired in 1984.

J-1704 is one of 100 Venom FB.4s, J-1701 to J-1800, built for the Swiss Air Force by a consortium of Swiss firms; it was assembled by the Federal Aircraft Factory at Emmen, made its acceptance flights on 6 September 1956 and was delivered in March 1957.

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.

When the Royal Navy lost its big fleet carriers in the 1970s, the Harrier offered a way to keep fixed-wing fighters at sea aboard the new Invincible-class ships. British Aerospace raised the cockpit for a better view, added a Blue Fox radar in a folding nose and used corrosion-resistant materials for life at sea. The first Sea Harrier FRS.1 flew on 20 August 1978, and a bow ‘ski-jump’ ramp let it take off heavier from a short deck.

The FA.2 was the first British aircraft armed with the AIM-120 AMRAAM, and its Blue Vixen radar could track targets below it against the clutter of the sea.

ZE694 was built as a Sea Harrier FRS.1 and later converted to FA.2 standard.

The Wasp grew out of the Saunders-Roe P.531, a small turbine helicopter developed from the Skeeter that first flew on 20 July 1958. Westland took over Saunders-Roe in 1959 and developed the design two ways: as the Scout for the Army and as the Wasp for the Royal Navy. The first pre-production Wasps flew on 28 October 1962.

On 25 April 1982 Wasps from HMS Endurance and HMS Plymouth attacked the Argentine submarine Santa Fe off South Georgia with AS.12 missiles, helping to put it out of action.

XS567 was delivered to the Royal Navy in June 1964 and flew with 829 Naval Air Squadron’s ship’s flights, first in HMS Gurkha and then in HMS Apollo, with which it took part in the first Armilla patrol in the Gulf in 1981.

The Sea King began as the Sikorsky S-61, a twin-turbine anti-submarine helicopter for the US Navy that first flew on 11 March 1959 as the SH-3. It had a watertight boat hull with stabilising sponsons, so that it could alight on the sea, and a five-blade rotor driven by two engines mounted side by side above the cabin. Westland took a licence and re-engined it with Rolls-Royce Gnome turboshafts, added British sonar and avionics, and flew the first Sea King HAS.1 at Yeovil on 7 May 1969.

Prince William flew Sea King HAR.3s as a search and rescue pilot with C Flight, No. 22 Squadron, at RAF Valley on Anglesey from 2010 to 2013.

XZ585 was the first Sea King built for the RAF and flew for the first time on 6 September 1977.

The Lynx was the British-designed member of the three helicopters that Britain and France agreed to develop together in 1967, alongside the Puma and the Gazelle. Westland drew it up as the WG.13, a fast twin-turbine utility helicopter with a semi-rigid main rotor hub machined from a single titanium forging, which made it unusually agile, and two Rolls-Royce Gem engines. Aérospatiale took a share of the production work.

On 11 August 1986 a modified Lynx, G-LYNX, flown by Westland test pilot Trevor Egginton, set a world speed record for helicopters of 249.1 mph (400.87 km/h) over Somerset. It still stands, and G-LYNX is now at The Helicopter Museum in Weston-super-Mare.

XZ720 was built at Yeovil as a HAS.2 and later brought up to HAS.3 standard.