AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 30 / 146

Plate 30 of 146 · Between the wars · Two-seat elementary trainer

Hawker Tomtit

Hawker Tomtit, painted as G-AFTA ‘K1786’, the Hawker Tomtit flown by the Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden: Sydney Camm’s two-seat elementary trainer of 1928, built for the RAF’s Central Flying School and flying training schools, a single-bay staggered biplane of 28 ft 6 in span with a steel and duralumin tube frame, fabric covering behind a metal-panelled nose, tandem open cockpits, a wide oleo undercarriage and a 150 hp Armstrong Siddeley Mongoose IIIC five-cylinder radial with its cylinders exposed; the last Tomtit built and the only survivor, sold to the civil register in 1935, Alex Henshaw’s wartime runabout, restored by Hawker in 1949 and returned to its RAF markings in 1967; shown as it flies today: silver-doped fabric, a polished aluminium cowling, forward side panels and top decking, type A roundels on the fuselage sides, on top of the upper wing and under the lower wing, ‘K1786’ in black on the fuselage sides and under the lower wings, red, white and blue rudder stripes with the serial across them, black struts, bronze exhaust pipes and a cream two-bladed propeller.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as G-AFTA ‘K1786’, the Hawker Tomtit flown by the Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden: Sydney Camm’s two-seat elementary trainer of 1928, built for the RAF’s Central Flying School and flying training schools, a single-bay staggered biplane of 28 ft 6 in span with a steel and duralumin tube frame, fabric covering behind a metal-panelled nose, tandem open cockpits, a wide oleo undercarriage and a 150 hp Armstrong Siddeley Mongoose IIIC five-cylinder radial with its cylinders exposed; the last Tomtit built and the only survivor, sold to the civil register in 1935, Alex Henshaw’s wartime runabout, restored by Hawker in 1949 and returned to its RAF markings in 1967; shown as it flies today: silver-doped fabric, a polished aluminium cowling, forward side panels and top decking, type A roundels on the fuselage sides, on top of the upper wing and under the lower wing, ‘K1786’ in black on the fuselage sides and under the lower wings, red, white and blue rudder stripes with the serial across them, black struts, bronze exhaust pipes and a cream two-bladed propeller. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1007 KB)

Data plate

Specification

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

History

The Tomtit

By the late 1920s the RAF was still teaching its pupils to fly on the Avro 504N, a direct descendant of a design from before the First World War, and the Air Ministry asked for a replacement with an all-metal structure, powered by the Armstrong Siddeley Mongoose five-cylinder radial. Sydney Camm answered at Hawker with the Tomtit: a single-bay staggered biplane with a frame of steel and duralumin tubes, covered in fabric behind a metal-panelled nose, with two open cockpits in tandem and a wide oleo undercarriage. George Bulman flew the prototype at Brooklands in November 1928.

The Tomtit was built with the new ideas of flying training in mind. The upper wing carried Handley Page automatic slots to soften the stall, and the pupil’s rear cockpit had a blind-flying instrument panel and a folding hood, so that instrument flying could be taught from the start. Production Tomtits, with the 150 hp Mongoose IIIC, went to the Central Flying School and No. 3 Flying Training School at Grantham from 1929, and a few were sold to the air forces of Canada and New Zealand. Only 36 were built in all, a few of them for private owners.

The Tomtit’s RAF career was short. The Avro Tutor became the standard elementary trainer in the early 1930s, and the Tomtits were passed on to station flights and communications work. From 1935 surplus Tomtits were sold on to the civil register, and a handful of them flew with flying clubs and private owners until the Second World War; only one survived it.

This airframe

Hawker Tomtit G-AFTA “K1786”

G-AFTAThe airframe modelled

K1786 was the last Tomtit built and served with the RAF until it was sold to the civil market in 1935, registered G-AFTA. In February 1941 Alex Henshaw bought three surplus Tomtits from the Leicester Aero Club as personal transport, and G-AFTA was the only one of them to survive the war. Henshaw sold it in 1946; Hawker bought it back in 1949, restored it and flew it in company colours, Neville Duke among its pilots, before presenting it to the Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden around 1960 (accounts vary between 1956 and 1960). In 1967 it went back to Hawker Siddeley at Dunsfold to be restored to the RAF training markings it wears today. Shuttleworth’s engineers later rebuilt its rare Mongoose engine, and it flew again on 16 June 2023. The model shows it as it flies now: silver-doped fabric, a polished aluminium cowling, forward side panels and top decking, type A roundels on the fuselage sides, on top of the upper wing and under the lower wing, ‘K1786’ in black on the fuselage sides and under the lower wings, red, white and blue rudder stripes with the serial across them, black struts, bronze exhaust pipes running aft from the cylinders and a cream propeller. No slot lines are visible on the upper wing in photographs of K1786, so none are modelled, and the navigation lights and small stencils are left off.

See it at The Shuttleworth Collection

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

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

Every airframe and serial All 146 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.