Reflections-Hawker Hunter

The subsequent investigation determined that it was not possible to tighten down the combined parachute and seat harness fully, and that he had probably dropped several inches out of his seat when inverted, enough to affect the control of the aircraft. I did not get to fly the Hunter Trainer until quite some time later but can categorically state that it had one of the worst seat harness arrangements I have ever come across; it was just not possible to tighten yourself hard down in the seat even though it was fitted with a negative ‘g’ strap.

Apart from that, the Hunter was a magnificent machine, well deserved of all the praise that has been heaped on it over the years. Unfortunately my first association with the aircraft was somewhat brief as we only used it as a transition vehicle to the Scimitar, it being a requirement that swept-wing experience be obtained before being let loose on Vickers Armstrong’s final attempt at designing a fighter.

All told we flew some ten hours in the TB which was the Royal Navy version of the Trainer, gaining a swept wing instrument rating as part of the conversion. The TB was developed from the RAF TT, the main difference being the fitting of an airfield arrester hook which enabled the use of the emergency arrester wire system set up at all naval airfields. Apart from the ejection seat harness, the only other small criticism that could be levelled at the aircraft was that it was possible to scrape the tail-cone on landing if you held-off for too long. T he Hunter Trainer was a beautifully coordinated machine with fully powered controls and joy of joys, electric trim for elevator and aileron controlled by a four way switch on the top of the control column. This might seem old hat nowadays but it was a quantum leap in development from the old trim wheels mounted in a box on the floor of the aircraft under your left hand.

The Hunter’s thoroughbred lineage clearly stemmed from the other two Hawker aircraft I had flown, the Sea Fury and the Seahawk; there was something distinctive in the design philosophy.

I don’t think any of us had any problems in the transition to swept-wing aircraft, even instrument flying was fairly straight forward. The only thing that one needed to watch was the stall and a tendency to pitch-up. The RAF, however, had a few problems with inexperienced pilots getting themselves into inverted spins in their Tl’s.

One remarkable incident occurred when two pilots could not recover from an inverted spin and the captain gave the order to eject. He went out under considerable negative ‘g’, well clear of his seat cushion and suffered fatal back injuries. The other pilot tried to eject but the seat (fortunately!) failed to operate. He made a number of unsuccessful attempts to fire the seat but just about the time he was preparing himself to meet his Maker, he noticed that the aircraft had recovered from the spin by itself. Despite considerable difficulties resulting from the absence of the canopy, he took control and flew the aircraft back to base. Subsequent analysis determined the change in airflow with the loss of the large canopy was most likely what had caused the aircraft to recover from the spin. It subsequently became SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) to dwell a pause after jettisoning the canopy if in an unrecoverable spin, on the off chance that the changed airflow might help spin recovery. All told, I only flew about 15 hours in the TB which from memory was all fairly straight forward with nothing untoward happening in that short association.

My next encounter with the Hunter was some eight years later when I was on the staff at Australia House in London. As Staff Officer (Air) I was allowed to do 25 hours a year and from memory the Royal Navy charged £125 per flying hour for the Hunter. Amusingly, when I flew their Wessex helicopters the charge was spelt out down to the last sixpence, something like £112/12/6!

I duly made arrangements to return to Lossiemouth for a week’s flying on the single seat GA11 which was a conversion from the RAF Mk4. With the phasing out of the Seahawk, the Royal Navy had identified a requirement for a single seat weapons trainer and the GA11 proved to be an ideal aircraft. On arrival, my hosts apologised for only having a T8B available for my dual check. This aircraft had been developed as the instrument trainer for the Buccaneer which was fitted with strip instruments. As with cars of the same period, strip reading instruments were a failure being no substitute for the good old fashioned round dial. It has certainly been my experience that one doesn’t read an instrument but rather notes where the needle is on the dial, this doesn’t seem to work with linear readouts. Lossiemouth, despite being located in the north of Scotland has one of the best weather factors in the United Kingdom due to the mountains to the west and south taking strength out of any weather coming from that direction. However I must have picked the only week when there were continuous strong winds and as luck would have it, the two runways were neatly bisected. However, with my time almost up, the wind at last abated and I was finally let loose in the single seater.

It was the fastest conversion I’ve ever done. Several day’s flying were crammed into the one day remaining to me with two sorties in the morning and two in the afternoon, and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of them. I had experienced high speed sub sonic flight in the Scimitar so could more easily mentally relate to the expanded time and space demands of an aircraft of the Hunter’s calibre. I must admit, however, that this was greatly aided by TACAN which took all the fun out of wondering where you were!

It would be presumptuous of me to attempt to sum the aircraft up after such a brief association, however if I had to do so I would liken it to a super Seahawk. One could not bestow a greater accolade.