AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 54 / 79

Plate 54 of 79 · Early jet age · Fighter-reconnaissance jet

Supermarine Swift

Swift FR.5, painted as WK281 ‘S’ of No. 79 Squadron, the Supermarine Swift FR.5 on loan from the RAF Museum to the Tangmere Military Aviation Museum, a fighter-reconnaissance Swift with the extended camera nose and oblique camera windows, the clear-view hood, the saw-tooth outer wing and a reheated Rolls-Royce Avon 114, flown on low-level reconnaissance from RAF Germany in the late 1950s, painted in the scheme it is displayed in today: Dark Green and Dark Sea Grey camouflage over High Speed Silver undersides, Type D roundels flanked by No. 79 Squadron’s white bars with a red barbed arrow, a red, white and blue fin flash with a yellow ‘S’ above it, a black ‘WK281’ on the rear fuselage, a red ejection-seat triangle on the nose and the twin-ADEN gun pack under the nose.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as WK281 ‘S’ of No. 79 Squadron, the Supermarine Swift FR.5 on loan from the RAF Museum to the Tangmere Military Aviation Museum, a fighter-reconnaissance Swift with the extended camera nose and oblique camera windows, the clear-view hood, the saw-tooth outer wing and a reheated Rolls-Royce Avon 114, flown on low-level reconnaissance from RAF Germany in the late 1950s, painted in the scheme it is displayed in today: Dark Green and Dark Sea Grey camouflage over High Speed Silver undersides, Type D roundels flanked by No. 79 Squadron’s white bars with a red barbed arrow, a red, white and blue fin flash with a yellow ‘S’ above it, a black ‘WK281’ on the rear fuselage, a red ejection-seat triangle on the nose and the twin-ADEN gun pack under the nose. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.0 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Swift FR.5 modelled here.

History

The Swift

The Swift began as an insurance policy. In 1948 Supermarine gave its straight-winged Attacker a swept wing and tail to make the Type 510, the first British aircraft to fly with both swept back, and when the Korean War made the RAF anxious for a fighter to match the MiG-15, the Air Ministry ordered a developed version off the drawing board as a back-up to the Hawker Hunter. The Type 541 had a new fuselage around a Rolls-Royce Avon axial-flow engine, fed by intakes on either side of the cockpit, and kept the 510’s wing, swept back at its leading edge and slightly drooped. The prototype, WJ960, first flew on 1 August 1951.

The Swift F.1 joined No. 56 Squadron at Waterbeach in February 1954, the RAF’s first swept-wing jet fighter in squadron service, and it went badly from the start. At height the wing tips stalled first and the nose pitched up, the engine surged when the guns were fired, and the reheat of the later marks would not light reliably at altitude. A string of accidents grounded the early marks, and the fighter Swifts were withdrawn in 1955. In between, on 25 September 1953, Supermarine’s chief test pilot Mike Lithgow flew the F.4 prototype WK198 at 735.7 mph over Libya to take the world air speed record, which a US Navy Douglas Skyray beat a few days later.

The Swift found its job low down, where its faults did not matter and its strength and steadiness did. The FR.5 had a longer nose with three cameras, a clear-view canopy, two 30 mm ADEN cannon and a saw-tooth outer wing, and from 1956 Nos. 2 and 79 Squadrons flew it on low-level photographic reconnaissance from RAF Germany and won NATO’s Royal Flush reconnaissance competitions. The Hunter FR.10 replaced it in 1961. The last mark, the F.7, carried Fireflash guided missiles in trials at Valley. About 200 Swifts were built, and six survive in Britain, complete or in part: the gazetteer lists FR.5s at Tangmere and in the South Wales Aviation Museum, the F.7 XF114 at Solent Sky, the nose of F.7 XF113 at Boscombe Down and WK198 at Brooklands.

This airframe

Swift FR.5 WK281

WK281The airframe modelled

WK281 was built by Supermarine as an FR.5 and served with No. 79 Squadron in RAF Germany as ‘S’, flying low-level camera sorties over the north German plain until the squadron gave up its Swifts in 1961. It was kept afterwards and photographed at RAF Abingdon in June 1968, still in its squadron markings, and it now belongs to the RAF Museum, which has lent it to the Tangmere Military Aviation Museum since 1994. The model shows it as displayed there today: Dark Green and Dark Sea Grey camouflage taken low down the fuselage sides over High Speed Silver undersides, Type D roundels flanked by No. 79 Squadron’s white bars with a red barbed arrow, a red, white and blue fin flash with a yellow ‘S’ above it, a black ‘WK281’ on the rear fuselage, a red ejection-seat triangle and a yellow rescue arrow on the nose, the camera windows in the nose and the twin ADEN gun pack beneath it.

See it at Tangmere Military Aviation Museum

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Swift in 5 UK collections. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 79 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.