AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 146 / 264

Plate 146 of 264 · Early jet age · Carrier night fighter

de Havilland Sea Hornet NF.21

Sea Hornet NF.21, VX250, painted as VX250, a de Havilland Sea Hornet NF.21 of the Fleet Air Arm, taken on charge in March 1950 and broken up at St Davids in December 1956: the two-seat radar night fighter version of the Hornet, de Havilland’s slender single-seat development of the Mosquito, with a wooden and light-alloy airframe, two handed 2,030 hp Rolls-Royce Merlin 134 and 135 engines driving four-bladed propellers that turn in opposite directions, flame dampers over the exhausts, an ASH radar in a thimble nose, the observer under a bubble canopy behind the wing, folding outer wings, an arrester hook and a dorsal fin fillet, shown standing tail-down on its main wheels and tail wheel with its wings spread: Extra Dark Sea Grey upper surfaces over Sky sides and undersides, a Sky fin and rudder, a black radome and spinners, black propellers with yellow tips, Type D roundels on the rear fuselage and above and below the wings, and ‘ROYAL NAVY’ over ‘VX 250’ with a large black ‘48’ ahead of it on both sides of the rear fuselage (shape from Ian Huntley’s NF.21 and F.1 drawings, cross-checked against a Wikimedia Commons three-view and photographs of Sea Hornets in service; the rear-fuselage markings follow the surviving section of VX250, which shows only the first two digits of its side number, so no third digit is painted; the rest of the scheme follows photographs of other NF.21s of the period, as no photograph of VX250 complete was found); no complete Hornet or Sea Hornet survives: the de Havilland Aircraft Museum at London Colney holds VX250’s rear fuselage and the rear fuselage of VW957.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as VX250, a de Havilland Sea Hornet NF.21 of the Fleet Air Arm, taken on charge in March 1950 and broken up at St Davids in December 1956: the two-seat radar night fighter version of the Hornet, de Havilland’s slender single-seat development of the Mosquito, with a wooden and light-alloy airframe, two handed 2,030 hp Rolls-Royce Merlin 134 and 135 engines driving four-bladed propellers that turn in opposite directions, flame dampers over the exhausts, an ASH radar in a thimble nose, the observer under a bubble canopy behind the wing, folding outer wings, an arrester hook and a dorsal fin fillet, shown standing tail-down on its main wheels and tail wheel with its wings spread: Extra Dark Sea Grey upper surfaces over Sky sides and undersides, a Sky fin and rudder, a black radome and spinners, black propellers with yellow tips, Type D roundels on the rear fuselage and above and below the wings, and ‘ROYAL NAVY’ over ‘VX 250’ with a large black ‘48’ ahead of it on both sides of the rear fuselage (shape from Ian Huntley’s NF.21 and F.1 drawings, cross-checked against a Wikimedia Commons three-view and photographs of Sea Hornets in service; the rear-fuselage markings follow the surviving section of VX250, which shows only the first two digits of its side number, so no third digit is painted; the rest of the scheme follows photographs of other NF.21s of the period, as no photograph of VX250 complete was found); no complete Hornet or Sea Hornet survives: the de Havilland Aircraft Museum at London Colney holds VX250’s rear fuselage and the rear fuselage of VW957. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.1 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (F.3, NF.21); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Sea Hornet NF.21, VX250 modelled here.

History

The Sea Hornet

De Havilland began the DH.103 Hornet as a private venture in 1942: a long-range single-seat fighter for the war against Japan, built on the Mosquito’s experience but smaller, slimmer and much faster. Rolls-Royce produced special Merlins with the superchargers and carburettors rearranged to reduce their frontal area, so the nacelles could be as narrow as possible, and the two engines were handed to turn their propellers in opposite directions. The wing combined a wooden upper skin with a light-alloy lower skin, bonded to the wooden structure with the new Redux adhesive. Geoffrey de Havilland Jr. flew the prototype, RR915, from Hatfield on 28 July 1944, and it proved to be one of the fastest piston-engined fighters ever built.

The war ended before the Hornet could reach the Far East. It entered RAF service with No. 64 Squadron in 1946 and served in Fighter Command until the jets replaced it, then flew ground-attack sorties against the communist insurgents in Malaya until 1955. The Royal Navy had been interested from the start. Heston Aircraft adapted the design for carrier flying with folding wings, an arrester hook and stronger undercarriage, Eric Brown made the first deck landings in August 1945, and the single-seat Sea Hornet F.20 entered Fleet Air Arm service in 1947.

The NF.21 was a two-seat night fighter. It carried ASH radar in a thimble nose, an observer in a separate cockpit under a bubble canopy behind the wing, flame dampers over the exhausts to hide them at night, and a larger dorsal fin fillet. The prototype flew in 1946, and production aircraft served from 1949, chiefly with No. 809 Squadron, until the Sea Venom jet night fighter replaced them in the mid-1950s. Fewer than eighty NF.21s were built, out of a total of about 380 Hornets and Sea Hornets of all marks, and the last left Fleet Air Arm service in 1957. None survives complete.

This airframe

Sea Hornet NF.21 VX250

VX250The airframe modelled

No complete Hornet or Sea Hornet survives anywhere. The de Havilland Aircraft Museum at London Colney holds the rear fuselages of two Sea Hornet NF.21s, VX250 and VW957, and the model shows VX250 as a complete aircraft. It was taken on charge by the Royal Navy in March 1950 and broken up at St Davids in December 1956; no photograph of it complete and no record of its units has been found. The model therefore takes its rear-fuselage markings from the surviving section: Extra Dark Sea Grey above Sky, with ‘ROYAL NAVY’ over ‘VX 250’ in black and a large black ‘48’ ahead of them on both sides. The number runs up to the cut edge of the section, so a third digit was probably lost with the forward fuselage, and none is painted. The rest of the scheme follows photographs of other NF.21s of the period: a Sky fin and rudder, a black radome and spinners, black propellers with yellow tips, and Type D roundels on the rear fuselage and above and below the wings. The shape follows Ian Huntley’s NF.21 and F.1 drawings, cross-checked against a Wikimedia Commons three-view and photographs of Sea Hornets in service.

See it at De Havilland Aircraft Museum

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Sea Hornet in one UK collection. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 264 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.