AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 62 / 81

Plate 62 of 81 · Early jet age · STOL light transport

Scottish Aviation Pioneer & Twin Pioneer

Twin Pioneer CC.2, painted as XL993, the RAF Museum’s Scottish Aviation Twin Pioneer CC.2 (c/n 528), built at Prestwick in 1958 as a CC.1 and converted to CC.2 at Khormaksar in 1961, flown by Nos. 78 and 21 Squadrons in Aden and Bahrain until 1966 and presented to the RAF Museum in 1968, shown at Cosford for four decades and now at Hendon, with its two 640 hp Alvis Leonides 531 radials, painted in the desert transport scheme it carries today: sand upper surfaces and sides over black undersides, black wing struts and undercarriage legs, a black anti-glare strip below the windscreen, Type D roundels on the rear fuselage and under the wingtips, a white ‘XL993’ aft of the fuselage roundels and under the wings, red, white and blue fin flashes on the outer faces of the outer fins, the yellow emergency-rescue cut-out on the starboard nose, and bare-metal propellers with yellow tips.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as XL993, the RAF Museum’s Scottish Aviation Twin Pioneer CC.2 (c/n 528), built at Prestwick in 1958 as a CC.1 and converted to CC.2 at Khormaksar in 1961, flown by Nos. 78 and 21 Squadrons in Aden and Bahrain until 1966 and presented to the RAF Museum in 1968, shown at Cosford for four decades and now at Hendon, with its two 640 hp Alvis Leonides 531 radials, painted in the desert transport scheme it carries today: sand upper surfaces and sides over black undersides, black wing struts and undercarriage legs, a black anti-glare strip below the windscreen, Type D roundels on the rear fuselage and under the wingtips, a white ‘XL993’ aft of the fuselage roundels and under the wings, red, white and blue fin flashes on the outer faces of the outer fins, the yellow emergency-rescue cut-out on the starboard nose, and bare-metal propellers with yellow tips. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.6 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Twin Pioneer CC.2 modelled here.

History

The Twin Pioneer

Scottish Aviation, at Prestwick, had made its name with the single-engined Pioneer, a high-winged utility aircraft that could get in and out of a strip little longer than a football pitch. The Twin Pioneer took the same idea to a bigger aircraft. It kept the high, strut-braced wing, now with full-span slats on the leading edge and big slotted flaps behind, and added a deep, square-sided cabin for 16 passengers, two Alvis Leonides radials in long nacelles and a tail with three fins and rudders. The prototype, G-ANTP, first flew from Prestwick on 25 June 1955 and was shown at Farnborough that September, landing in a remarkably short distance.

Airlines, survey companies and oil firms bought it for rough country, from Swissair and Austrian Airlines to Borneo Airways, Kuwait and Dutch New Guinea, but 1957 was a bad year. Two Twin Pioneers were lost when fatigue failures let the wing come away in flight, and the second, in Libya that December, killed Scottish Aviation’s managing director and co-founder, David McIntyre. The structure was redesigned and strengthened, but sales never recovered: 87 were built in all. The RAF ordered 39, delivered in 1958 and 1959, 32 of them CC.1s with 560 hp Leonides 514s and seven CC.2s to the Series 3 standard with 640 hp Leonides 531s; the CC.1s were later brought up to the same standard.

In RAF hands the “Twin Pin” went where few other aircraft could. No. 78 Squadron at Khormaksar flew it to the up-country airstrips of the Aden protectorates from late 1958, No. 152 Squadron in Bahrain supported the army around the Gulf and Oman, and No. 209 Squadron at Seletar used it through the Malayan Emergency and the Borneo confrontation, carrying troops, supplies, casualties and paratroops, and sometimes bombs or rockets under the stub wings. No. 21 Squadron took over the Middle East aircraft in 1965, and the last RAF Twin Pioneers were withdrawn from No. 209 Squadron in December 1968. Three survive in Britain: XL993 at the RAF Museum, the Series 3 G-BBVF at the National Museum of Flight and the fuselage of G-AZHJ at the South Wales Aviation Museum.

This airframe

Twin Pioneer CC.2 XL993

XL993The airframe modelled

XL993, construction number 528, was built at Prestwick as a CC.1 and first flew on 12 June 1958. It was allotted to No. 78 Squadron, the first RAF Twin Pioneer unit, and arrived at Khormaksar in November 1958 as ‘Y’, flying supplies, passengers and casualties to the airstrips at Dhala, Lodar, Beihan and Ataq. In 1960 it supported the Special Air Service from Sharjah, and in June 1961 it was converted to CC.2 standard with 640 hp Leonides engines. In 1963 it helped recover a lost services adventure party from the Yemen border, and in 1964, during the Radfan campaign, it fired SS.11 missiles on two trial sorties. It moved to No. 21 Squadron in Bahrain in June 1965 and flew home in October 1966. Presented to the RAF Museum in 1968, it went on display at Cosford in 1979 and later stood in the National Cold War Exhibition there; it is now at the RAF Museum in London. The model shows it as photographed between 2019 and 2023: sand upper surfaces and sides over black undersides, black wing struts and undercarriage legs, a black anti-glare strip below the windscreen, Type D roundels on the rear fuselage and under the wingtips, a white “XL993” aft of the fuselage roundels and under the wings, red, white and blue fin flashes on the outer faces of the outer fins, the yellow emergency-rescue cut-out on the starboard nose and bare-metal propellers with yellow tips.

See it at Royal Air Force Museum London

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

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

Every airframe and serial All 81 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.