In the late 1940s into the early 1950s, the RAF is facing a crisis.
Having bought into service the first generation of jet fighters in the case of the Vampire
and the Meteor it suddenly finds itself that these aircraft are outclassed.
At this particular time, the Royal Australian Air Force are flying the Gloucester Meteor
against North Korean forces that include the new generation of MIG fighters and something
has to be done to improve the RAF's combat readiness.
They initially, as a stopgap, purchased the North American Sabre, but they have to rush
into production essentially a second-generation jet fighter and that leads to this fantastic
aircraft behind us the Hawker Hunter.
Like a lot of aircraft especially new technology, it had a number of teething problems.
But once those were ironed out the aircraft became a huge success for the British aircraft
industry.
Exported to over 20 nations around the world and utilized by at least one of those until
2014.
It would see action in a number of wars and conflicts and it would also become a popular
appearance on the air show scene flying in displays from 1952 until the tragic events
at Shoreham in 2015.
Finally, an aircraft just like the version behind me here was very famously flown under
the top span of Tower Bridge and we'll talk about that story a little bit more later on.
The prototype Hawker Hunter first flew in 1951 only six years after the end of the Second
World War.
And as an example of just how big a leap forwards in technology it was - the RAF aircrew flying
for example the Spitfire towards the end of the Second World War would have been given
one of these, a pilot's notes book.
Very, very thin, pretty basic, covering the main aspects of flight in a Spitfire.
By the time the Hunter is in service, we're through to a binder.
A huge amount of technical detail, of course things like ejection seats feature in here
as well.
But just in those two publications, we can see how much of a leap forward the Hunter
was in the RAF.
Well the Hunter was a great step forward because of course it was a swept-wing aircraft and
you can fly faster and with better control.
The thing with the Hunter F.1 really was it didn't really have the range.
You know 35,40 minutes you really didn't want to be too far away from where you had to get
back down.
The Hunter is in super priority production for the RAF and it's also been built under
license in Holland and Belgium.
She too can fly at supersonic speeds.That's one of the shock clouds characteristic of
sonic flight.
Now wait for it...
[Sonic Boom].
The biggest differences between the Hawker Hunter and the aircraft that it's replacing
like the conventional straight wing Vampire or Meteor is that swept wing, reducing turbulence
and therefore friction through the air.
As well it has a nice high tail again helping with control and stability as speeds and manoeuvrability
increases.
The first production variants of the Hunter the F.1 and the F.2 powered by the Avon and
Sapphire engines had a number of teething problems.
They were then developed becoming the F.3 which was actually a modified version of the
prototype designed to make an attempt on the world absolute speed record.
A record it broke at over 727 miles an hour in September 1953.
By the time we get to the F.6 those problems have been ironed out and resolved and by taking
a close look at the aircraft behind us we can see how some of those designs were changed
and we'll go and have a close look.
Early versions of the Hawker Hunter had a conventional straight smooth leading edge
to the wing.
By the time we get to the Hunter F.6 the Avon has gained more power causing the aircraft
to have pitch-up problems.
The improvement required to solve that and maintain its handling is this rather unconventional
dog-toothed shape wing.
Might look a bit unconventional, but in having this on the aircraft it did keep the aircraft's
famed manoeuvrability intact.
Its manoeuvrability in my hands was initially limited, but it then a modification called
the sawtooth leading edge was introduced and also the further modification was to the tailplane
structure which gave one much better control.
And by the time I left the squadron, even I didn't lose control quite so frequently
in those days.
When the Hawker Hunter was first envisaged, it was in a time before air-to-air missiles
had been suitably developed.
So the aircraft was actually equipped with a fairly conventional armament, in this case
four ADEN cannon.
In the early versions however, as the spent cartridges fell away from the aircraft they
would fall back towards the air intakes and to the engine causing problems.
Leading to later versions from the F.4 onwards gaining these cartridge collection pods often
referred to as 'Sabrinas'.
So we've come around to the other side of the Imperial War Museum's Hunter so that we
can take a close look at the gun pack under the belly of the aircraft.
The gun pack itself is designed to be lowered to remove the spent ammunition and also to
reload the guns.
It will be lowered by a winding handle on both sides and a well-polished and practiced
ground crew could turn this aircraft around to get it back in the fight in a very, very
short space of time.
So the Hawker design team had produced an incredibly new design for the air force and
the results of all that new technology made it a real pilot's aeroplane.
It was relatively fast for its time, not supersonic in level flight, but certainly capable of
supersonic speeds in a dive and it was incredibly manoeuvrable as well.
Everything that a pilot would have wanted to have taken a jet into a dogfight.
The early marks of the Hunter they weren't anything really to write home about.
But the Hunter went on and as you know became a genuinely memorable aeroplane.
Not quite as legendary as the Spitfire, but getting on that way.
And very good as a second-generation fighter, an excellent one.
The Hunter was an aerobatic aircraft and lent itself to performing at air shows.
A number of display teams here in Britain were formed around it such as the Black Arrows
and the Blue Diamonds which in many respects were the precursors to the modern-day Red
Arrows.
However in the case of the Black Arrows, at the Farnborough air show they decided to try
and loop a huge number of jet aircraft.
They pulled together 22 aircraft and were able to complete an entire loop over the air
show a feat that has not ever been bettered.
The pictures you're seeing now are historic in that they capture at the very height of
their fame a magnificently coordinated team that is no more.
A page of glory that can never be erased from the history of aviation.
The Hunter's main intended role was to be as an interceptor fighter.
Much like the Spitfire had done during the Battle of Britain, now the Hunter was going
to be used in a similar role against possible incursions into British airspace by aircraft
operated by amongst others the Soviet air force.
Their name dramatically describes the role for which these turbojets were intended, they
must hunt.
And like the hawks they must be as fleet as the wind in the pursuit of their prey.
This may be just another exercise, but it is going to be an exact replica of the real
thing.
The Hunter was incredibly useful for a period, but of course, technology is always moving
onwards leading to supersonic level flight and the addition of air-to-air missiles something
that the Hunter is not able to be adapted with.
So it sees a shift in its initial role from a fighter-interceptor designed to defend,
to an aircraft that actually moves into a ground attack role.
The early ones suffered from a lack of fuel and therefore range.
In the case of the ground attack Hunters that see out service in the RAF, the fuel tanks
become standard so that they can carry out a range of missions behind the front lines.
In RAF service the Hunter would see action at both the time of the Suez conflict and
in defence missions around the Aden protectorate.
On both of these occasions, they did operate in both an air defence role and also in a
ground attack role.
The Hunter would be utilized to take out enemy positions that were causing problems to troops
in contact on the ground.
Lessons learnt from the Second World War allowed forward air controllers to actually call in
aircraft that weren't that far behind the front line and in the case of the later variants
of the Hunter they could call in rocket strikes with relative precision against enemy positions.
Beautiful aircraft.
It was easy to look after.
You know it's a nice little size it only weighed about seven tonnes compared with the other
ones.
We could turn that aircraft around, we could fit rockets, guns, refuel it, and then it'd
be off flying again within nine minutes.
There was nothing fancy about it, but it was pretty much an ideal type of aircraft for
what was being used for.
It was being phased out because everything was going on to you know supersonic and all
the rest of it.
Whereas it was good for the ground attack that's what we used it for.
The Hawker Hunter becomes a great export success for the British aircraft industry.
The earlier versions of jet aircraft in this country such as the Vampire and Meteor did
see some initial success, but the Hunter was incredibly successful, being exported to over
20 nations around the world.
And it also goes to the Lebanese air force who, although they initially retire them in
the early 2000s, regenerate a small number and incredibly are still flying them until
2014.
Allowing the Hunter's span of active use to span over 50 years, beating the previous record
of the English Electric Canberra.
In 2018 the Royal Air Force celebrated their 100th anniversary.
A huge formation of RAF aircraft was assembled to fly over central London to mark this momentous
occasion.
But amazingly 50 years previously on the 50th anniversary of the formation of the RAF nothing
spectacular had been planned.
This led to Flight Lieutenant Alan Pollock taking matters into his own hands.
He was tasked that day with flying a very brief flypast event at an RAF base, but realized
that if he broke away from that formation he would be able to put in a brief appearance
over central London in his Hawker Hunter.
I flew over the various bridges and there was Westminster and it was an incredible sight
really.
And I think I went round three times over the Houses of Parliament because it just struck
me that making a noise there was really what it was all about.
And the strange thing was at that very moment in Parliament they were discussing, without
a word of a lie, noise abatement and to do with aircraft noise.
Then I made my way out over the various other bridges and then there ahead was Tower Bridge
sort of staring me right in the face.
And it was just an interesting target and I hadn't meant to go through it at all but
it was just too intriguing.
And then there was a bus coming left to right and I thought well the only way to do it safely
is to go in to do a kind of reverse bombing run on the top span and that's what I did.
But everything was safe on the bridge apart from one cyclist that fell off with fright
or something like that.
And he actually wrote to me and he didn't want any compensation at all.
Having completed his fly-through of Tower Bridge he goes back to his airbase and lands
expecting to face the consequences.
But they are consequences that never really come.
He's not court marshalled or hauled in front of his superiors as it's often viewed that
that would have been bad publicity in a time when the RAF should have been marking a significant
anniversary.
The Hawker Hunter would of course find its day that it in turn had to be replaced.
It would be replaced by numerous airframes such as the supersonic English Electric Lightning.
Following retirement from the RAF and other nations around the world, the Hawker Hunter
moved into civilian hands to be displayed privately at air shows and events around the
country.
A very popular addition to most air show lineups, unfortunately things would all change in 2015.
When a Hawker Hunter operating at the Shoreham air show unfortunately crashed and killed
a number of people outside of the air show arena.
It's changed the way that air shows are flown and we haven't seen any significant performance
by classic jets at British air shows since.
The Black Arrows have flown into history.
But treble one squadron lives on as a tribute to the Royal Air Force.
A powerful deterrent to anyone foolhardy enough to think that the warning in the squadron's
motto "standing by" is nothing but an idle boast.