AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 13 / 67

Plate 13 of 67 · Between the wars · Light day bomber

Hawker Hart family

Hind, painted as K5414, The Shuttleworth Collection’s airworthy Hawker Hind, one of the light bombers passed from the RAF to the Royal Afghan Air Force in 1938, brought back from Kabul in 1970 and restored to fly at Old Warden as G-AENP with its 640 hp Rolls-Royce Kestrel V, painted as a Hind of No. 15 Squadron RAF in the mid-1930s: polished aluminium cowling and forward fuselage panels, silver dope on the rear fuselage and all flying surfaces, a dark blue fin carrying the squadron badge, dark blue ‘XV’ ahead of the fuselage roundel and black ‘K5414’ behind it, ‘K’ over ‘5414’ on the rudder, roundels above the upper wing and on and under the lower wing, a blue spinner and wheel hubs, a wooden Watts propeller, practice bombs under the lower wings and a Lewis gun on the rear cockpit mounting, as it is flown from Old Warden.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as K5414, The Shuttleworth Collection’s airworthy Hawker Hind, one of the light bombers passed from the RAF to the Royal Afghan Air Force in 1938, brought back from Kabul in 1970 and restored to fly at Old Warden as G-AENP with its 640 hp Rolls-Royce Kestrel V, painted as a Hind of No. 15 Squadron RAF in the mid-1930s: polished aluminium cowling and forward fuselage panels, silver dope on the rear fuselage and all flying surfaces, a dark blue fin carrying the squadron badge, dark blue ‘XV’ ahead of the fuselage roundel and black ‘K5414’ behind it, ‘K’ over ‘5414’ on the rudder, roundels above the upper wing and on and under the lower wing, a blue spinner and wheel hubs, a wooden Watts propeller, practice bombs under the lower wings and a Lewis gun on the rear cockpit mounting, as it is flown from Old Warden. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (890 KB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (Hart, Hind, Demon, Afghan); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Hind modelled here.

History

The Hind

The Hind grew out of Sydney Camm’s Hart, the two-seat light day bomber that first flew in June 1928 and gave the RAF a shock in the 1930 air exercises, when it proved faster than the Siskins and Bulldogs sent to intercept it. Hawker turned the Hart into a whole family: the Demon two-seat fighter, the Audax for army co-operation, the Osprey for the Fleet Air Arm, and trainers and export versions besides, more than 2,800 aircraft in all. The Hind was the last of the bombers, a refined Hart with the more powerful Rolls-Royce Kestrel V, a tailwheel in place of the skid, ejector exhausts and a cut-down rear cockpit that gave the gunner a better field of fire for his Lewis gun. The prototype, K2915, flew on 12 September 1934.

It was built as a stopgap. The RAF’s expansion schemes of the mid-1930s called for far more bomber squadrons than the new monoplanes, the Fairey Battle and the Bristol Blenheim, could equip in time, so the Air Ministry ordered the proven biplane in quantity. No. 21 Squadron received the first Hinds in December 1935, and within two years the type equipped some twenty regular and Auxiliary Air Force bomber squadrons, carrying up to 500 lb of bombs at a top speed of 186 mph. More than 500 were built for the RAF.

From 1938 the monoplanes replaced it, and most Hinds became advanced trainers, many fitted with dual controls, teaching a generation of bomber pilots before the war. Hinds were sold or passed on to Afghanistan, Persia, Latvia, Portugal, Ireland, New Zealand and South Africa, whose Hinds flew against the Italians in East Africa in 1940. The Royal Afghan Air Force received twenty ex-RAF Hinds in 1938 and kept some flying into the 1950s, and two of them came home: the Shuttleworth Collection flies one and the RAF Museum displays the other at Cosford.

This airframe

Hind K5414 (G-AENP)

K5414The airframe modelled

K5414 is the only Hawker Hind still flying. Hawker built it at Kingston for the RAF in the mid-1930s, and in 1938 it was one of the Hinds handed over to the Royal Afghan Air Force, which flew them for many years after the RAF had given up the type. The Afghan government gave it to the Shuttleworth Collection, which brought it back from Kabul in 1970, whose engineers restored it to fly with a Rolls-Royce Kestrel V; it flies from Old Warden, Bedfordshire, under the civil registration G-AENP. It wears the colours of No. 15 Squadron, which flew Hinds from Abingdon in the late 1930s. The model shows it as flown today: polished aluminium cowling and forward fuselage panels, silver dope on the rear fuselage and all the flying surfaces, a dark blue fin carrying the squadron badge, dark blue “XV” ahead of the fuselage roundel and black “K5414” behind it, “K” over “5414” on the rudder, roundels above the upper wing and on and under the lower wing, “K5414” under the lower wings, a blue spinner and wheel hubs, a wooden Watts two-blade propeller, practice bombs on carriers under the lower wings and a Lewis gun on the rear cockpit mounting.

See it at The Shuttleworth Collection

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Hind in 3 UK collections. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 67 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.