AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 105 / 167

Plate 105 of 167 · Early jet age · Carrier strike fighter

Westland Wyvern TF.1

Wyvern TF.1, painted as VR137, the Fleet Air Arm Museum’s Westland Wyvern TF.1 and the only Wyvern left anywhere, one of the pre-production batch and the last airframe built with the original Rolls-Royce Eagle piston engine, never flown and kept at the College of Aeronautics, Cranfield, before it came to Yeovilton: a single-seat carrier strike fighter of 44 ft span with a 24-cylinder H-block Eagle 22 of 3,500 hp driving two four-bladed Rotol contra-rotating propellers, a cranked wing with inboard anhedral, outboard dihedral and a fold at the kink, a high bubble canopy set well forward and a tailwheel undercarriage, shown standing tail-down with the wings spread and the cowlings closed (the museum displays it with the wings folded and the starboard cowlings removed): bare unpainted aluminium overall as displayed today, a mid-grey spinner, black propeller blades with yellow tips, a small black ‘137’ on the port rear fuselage and a small red stencil ahead of the windscreen.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as VR137, the Fleet Air Arm Museum’s Westland Wyvern TF.1 and the only Wyvern left anywhere, one of the pre-production batch and the last airframe built with the original Rolls-Royce Eagle piston engine, never flown and kept at the College of Aeronautics, Cranfield, before it came to Yeovilton: a single-seat carrier strike fighter of 44 ft span with a 24-cylinder H-block Eagle 22 of 3,500 hp driving two four-bladed Rotol contra-rotating propellers, a cranked wing with inboard anhedral, outboard dihedral and a fold at the kink, a high bubble canopy set well forward and a tailwheel undercarriage, shown standing tail-down with the wings spread and the cowlings closed (the museum displays it with the wings folded and the starboard cowlings removed): bare unpainted aluminium overall as displayed today, a mid-grey spinner, black propeller blades with yellow tips, a small black ‘137’ on the port rear fuselage and a small red stencil ahead of the windscreen. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (850 KB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (TF.1); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Wyvern TF.1 modelled here.

History

The Wyvern TF.1

The Wyvern was designed in 1944 as a single-seat torpedo fighter for the Royal Navy, a big carrier aircraft that could fly as a fighter and still carry a torpedo or a heavy bomb load. Westland built it round the Rolls-Royce Eagle, a new 24-cylinder H-block piston engine of about 3,500 hp, which turned two four-bladed contra-rotating propellers so that the torque of so much power would not swing the aircraft on take-off. Harald Penrose flew the first prototype, TS371, at Boscombe Down on 16 December 1946.

Development was long and costly. Westland’s assistant test pilot Peter Garner was killed in October 1947 when a propeller bearing failed, and Rolls-Royce soon stopped work on the Eagle to concentrate on jets. Only a small pre-production batch of Eagle-engined TF.1s was built before the design was changed to a turboprop, first the Rolls-Royce Clyde and then the Armstrong Siddeley Python. The Python-engined S.4 became the service version, and 127 Wyverns of all marks were built.

The S.4 joined 813 Naval Air Squadron at Ford in May 1953 and was cleared for carriers in 1954; 827, 830 and 831 Squadrons followed. During the Suez operation of November 1956, 830 Squadron flew 79 strike sorties from HMS Eagle and lost two aircraft to anti-aircraft fire, both pilots being rescued. The Wyvern’s front-line career was short: the last squadron, 813, disbanded in April 1958.

This airframe

Wyvern TF.1 VR137

VR137The airframe modelled

VR137 is the only Wyvern left anywhere. It was one of the pre-production TF.1s and the last to be built with the original Rolls-Royce Eagle piston engine. It never flew: once the Wyvern had gone over to turboprops it went to the College of Aeronautics at Cranfield as an instructional airframe, and it later came to the Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton. It is displayed today in bare aluminium with its wings folded and the starboard engine cowlings removed to show the Eagle. The model shows it in that finish, with black, yellow-tipped propellers, but with the wings spread and the cowlings closed so the whole shape can be seen.

See it at Fleet Air Arm Museum

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Wyvern TF.1 in one UK collection. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 167 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.