3D model
Turn it over
A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as XN974 in the Royal Navy extra dark sea grey and white scheme it wears at the Yorkshire Air Museum, Elvington. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (888 KB)
History
The Buccaneer
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 first production aircraft, the S.1, joined the Royal Navy in 1962 but its two small de Havilland Gyron Junior turbojets left it short of power for carrier launches. The S.2 of 1965 fitted Rolls-Royce Spey turbofans, which gave a great deal more thrust and range, and a drooped, blown wing for slow approaches to the deck. It is the mark most people remember.
When the Royal Navy’s fixed-wing carriers were retired in the 1970s, many Buccaneers passed to the RAF, which flew them for maritime strike and over-land attack until 1994. In 1991 they marked targets with laser designators for Tornado bombers in the Gulf War.
This airframe
S.2 XN974
XN974 is a Buccaneer S.2 preserved at the Yorkshire Air Museum at Elvington, near York. The model shows it in the Royal Navy colours of its repaint there: extra dark sea grey above, white beneath, a tan radome, “ROYAL NAVY” on the fin and a large black serial under each wing. The museum displays it with the outer wings folded, as on a carrier deck; the model is shown with them spread.
Where to see one
In the gazetteer
The gazetteer records the Buccaneer in 8 UK collections. The airframe modelled here is marked.