AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 114 / 170

Plate 114 of 170 · Early jet age · Jet fighter

Saab J 29F Tunnan

J 29F, painted as 29640, the Midland Air Museum’s Saab J 29F Tunnan and the only Tunnan in Britain, built at Linköping in 1954 as a late J 29 and brought to J 29F standard, flown by the Swedish Air Force with the code ‘08’, displayed at the Historic Aircraft Museum at Southend by 1970 and at Coventry since that museum closed: Sweden’s first swept-wing jet fighter, a single-seat fighter of 36 ft 1 in span with a stubby barrel fuselage around a licence-built de Havilland Ghost (the afterburning Svenska Flygmotor RM 2B), a round nose intake, a mid-set wing swept at 25 degrees with the J 29F’s dog-tooth leading edge, a bubble canopy, a tall swept fin on a slim tail boom and the jet pipe exhausting beneath it, shown standing nose-high on its tricycle undercarriage with drop tanks on short pylons, the inboard slats hanging open and red covers over the intake and jet pipe: silver overall, a black ‘08’ on the nose and fin, a black ‘20’ and a small ‘29640’ on the rear fuselage, three-crown roundels on the rear fuselage and the upper wings and small orange-yellow warning panels on the nose (no photograph of the undersides was found, so no under-wing roundels are shown).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as 29640, the Midland Air Museum’s Saab J 29F Tunnan and the only Tunnan in Britain, built at Linköping in 1954 as a late J 29 and brought to J 29F standard, flown by the Swedish Air Force with the code ‘08’, displayed at the Historic Aircraft Museum at Southend by 1970 and at Coventry since that museum closed: Sweden’s first swept-wing jet fighter, a single-seat fighter of 36 ft 1 in span with a stubby barrel fuselage around a licence-built de Havilland Ghost (the afterburning Svenska Flygmotor RM 2B), a round nose intake, a mid-set wing swept at 25 degrees with the J 29F’s dog-tooth leading edge, a bubble canopy, a tall swept fin on a slim tail boom and the jet pipe exhausting beneath it, shown standing nose-high on its tricycle undercarriage with drop tanks on short pylons, the inboard slats hanging open and red covers over the intake and jet pipe: silver overall, a black ‘08’ on the nose and fin, a black ‘20’ and a small ‘29640’ on the rear fuselage, three-crown roundels on the rear fuselage and the upper wings and small orange-yellow warning panels on the nose (no photograph of the undersides was found, so no under-wing roundels are shown). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (940 KB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (); engine, crew and dimensions are for the J 29F modelled here.

History

The J 29F Tunnan

At the end of the war Sweden wanted a jet fighter of its own, and in late 1945 a Saab team led by Lars Brising drew a short, fat fuselage built around the de Havilland Ghost centrifugal engine, with a round intake in the nose and the jet pipe exhausting under a slim tail boom. Its wing was changed to a 25-degree sweep after German research reached Saab by way of Switzerland, which made the J 29 the first swept-wing jet fighter in western Europe. Its shape earned it the name Tunnan, “the barrel”.

The British test pilot S/L Bob Moore first flew the prototype on 1 September 1948. He called it an ugly duckling on the ground, but it proved faster than predicted. Production aircraft reached the Bråvalla wing, F 13, in May 1951, and 661 were built by 1956, more than of any other Saab aircraft. Reconnaissance S 29Cs set a world speed record of 977 km/h over a 500 km closed circuit in 1954. The J 29F, the final fighter version, had an afterburner and a dog-tooth wing, and 308 were converted from earlier airframes between 1954 and 1956; from 1963 they carried Sidewinder missiles.

In 1961 Sweden sent J 29Bs to the Congo with the United Nations, where they flew ground-attack sorties for more than two years without losing an aircraft in action: Sweden’s only jet combat. Austria bought thirty J 29Fs and flew them until 1972. The Swedish fighter squadrons gave up their Tunnans in 1967, but some flew on as target tugs and electronic-warfare trainers, and the last official flight was at the air force’s 50th anniversary show in 1976.

This airframe

J 29F 29640 (“08”)

29640The airframe modelled

29640 was completed in 1954 as one of the late J 29s and brought up to J 29F standard with the afterburner and dog-tooth wing. After its Swedish Air Force service it came to Britain, where it was on show at the Historic Aircraft Museum at Southend by 1970, and it moved to the Midland Air Museum at Coventry after the Southend collection closed. It is the only Tunnan in Britain. The model shows it as displayed: silver overall with a black “08” on the nose and fin, the three-crown roundels, drop tanks on short pylons and red covers over the intake and jet pipe.

See it at Midland Air Museum

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the J 29F Tunnan in one UK collection. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 170 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.