AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 189 / 189

Plate 189 of 189 · Modern age · Canard-delta multirole fighter

Eurofighter Typhoon DA2

Typhoon DA2, painted as ZH588, the RAF Museum London’s Eurofighter Typhoon development aircraft DA2, the first British-assembled Eurofighter, first flown from Warton on 6 April 1994, used by British Aerospace for flight-envelope and flight-control trials, later re-engined with Eurojet EJ200s, and hung from the roof of the Hendon hall since its retirement: the RAF’s current front-line fighter in prototype form, 35 ft 11 in in span, with two afterburning turbofans fed by a chin intake under the cockpit, a delta wing, all-moving canard foreplanes beside the cockpit, a single swept fin and a bubble canopy, shown standing level on its tricycle undercarriage with large black instrumentation pods on the wing tips, an empty pylon under each outer wing and a flight-test air-data boom on the upper port side of the radome: gloss black overall with a gold-tinted canopy, a pink and light-blue low-visibility RAF flash near the top of the fin, a cockerel badge and a white ‘ZH588’ lower on the fin, a low-visibility RAF roundel and the four-nation Eurofighter development roundel on each side of the fuselage and on the upper wings, white ‘NO STEP’ stencils and a yellow rescue panel, as displayed (it hangs with its wheels up, so the undercarriage follows production Typhoons, the cockerel badge is simplified and the upper-wing roundel positions are approximate).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as ZH588, the RAF Museum London’s Eurofighter Typhoon development aircraft DA2, the first British-assembled Eurofighter, first flown from Warton on 6 April 1994, used by British Aerospace for flight-envelope and flight-control trials, later re-engined with Eurojet EJ200s, and hung from the roof of the Hendon hall since its retirement: the RAF’s current front-line fighter in prototype form, 35 ft 11 in in span, with two afterburning turbofans fed by a chin intake under the cockpit, a delta wing, all-moving canard foreplanes beside the cockpit, a single swept fin and a bubble canopy, shown standing level on its tricycle undercarriage with large black instrumentation pods on the wing tips, an empty pylon under each outer wing and a flight-test air-data boom on the upper port side of the radome: gloss black overall with a gold-tinted canopy, a pink and light-blue low-visibility RAF flash near the top of the fin, a cockerel badge and a white ‘ZH588’ lower on the fin, a low-visibility RAF roundel and the four-nation Eurofighter development roundel on each side of the fuselage and on the upper wings, white ‘NO STEP’ stencils and a yellow rescue panel, as displayed (it hangs with its wheels up, so the undercarriage follows production Typhoons, the cockerel badge is simplified and the upper-wing roundel positions are approximate). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (987 KB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Typhoon DA2 modelled here.

History

The Typhoon DA2

In the early 1980s Britain, West Germany and Italy, who had already built the Tornado together, began looking for a single agile fighter to replace their Phantoms, Starfighters and Jaguars in the 1990s. France took part in the early talks but left in 1985 to build the Rafale, and Spain joined instead. The four nations set up Eurofighter GmbH in Munich in 1986 to run the European Fighter Aircraft, and Eurojet to build its new EJ200 engine, and in November 1988 they signed the main development contract. The layout followed British Aerospace’s EAP demonstrator: a delta wing, canard foreplanes beside the cockpit, a chin intake and a single fin, made largely of carbon-fibre composites and deliberately unstable, so that it could only be flown through a digital fly-by-wire system.

The end of the Cold War nearly killed it. Reunified Germany threatened to pull out in 1992, and the programme was reviewed, slowed and renamed Eurofighter 2000 before the partners recommitted. Seven development aircraft were built, shared between the four nations’ factories. The first, DA1, flew from Manching in Bavaria on 27 March 1994, and the first British aircraft, DA2, followed from Warton in Lancashire on 6 April. Both first flew with Tornado RB199 engines because the EJ200 was not yet ready. The name Typhoon was adopted in 1998, production contracts for 620 aircraft were signed that year, and the first production aircraft flew in 2003.

The RAF took its first Typhoons in 2003 and began holding Quick Reaction Alert with them at RAF Coningsby in 2007; Typhoons from Coningsby and Lossiemouth have guarded British airspace ever since. Later batches added air-to-ground weapons, turning it into a multirole aircraft that flew combat missions over Libya in 2011 and against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. About 600 have been built, for Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait and Qatar, and it is expected to serve into the 2040s. In the gazetteer DA2 can be seen at the RAF Museum London, and the EAP that led to it is at the RAF Museum Midlands at Cosford.

This airframe

Typhoon DA2 ZH588

ZH588The airframe modelled

ZH588, development aircraft DA2, was built by British Aerospace at Warton and first flew there on 6 April 1994, ten days after DA1. It was the programme’s main British test aircraft, flying much of the work on the flight-control laws and handling, at first with RB199 engines and later with EJ200s. After many years of test flying it was retired and given to the RAF Museum, where it now hangs from the roof at Hendon. The model shows it as photographed there: gloss black overall with a gold-tinted canopy, a pink and light-blue low-visibility RAF flash near the top of the fin, a cockerel badge and a white ‘ZH588’ lower on the fin, a low-visibility RAF roundel and the four-nation Eurofighter development roundel on each side of the fuselage and on the upper wings, white ‘NO STEP’ stencils along the spine and a yellow rescue panel on the intake side. It keeps the large black instrumentation pods on its wing tips, an empty pylon under each outer wing and a flight-test air-data boom on the upper port side of the radome. In the museum its undercarriage is up; the model stands it on its wheels, with the undercarriage of a production Typhoon. The cockerel badge is simplified and the positions of the upper-wing roundels are approximate, because the only views from above are oblique.

See it at Royal Air Force Museum London

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Typhoon DA2 in one UK collection. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 189 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.