Hawker P1121

There’s an article on this aircraft in the current issue of Flypast.

BK: who would that have been then?

Hawker began scheming a Super Hunter 3/54. Korean Armistice and Stalin’s appointment with Marx had been in 1953: all Govts. were seeking a Peace Dividend. Hunter F.6 R&D and production had been muchly subsidised by Uncle Sam, whose largesse dried up exactly then, 3/54. So RAF did not, as everybody else did, take free F-100C/D. Instead we could replace voluminous Sam-funded Venom FB.4s with…something cheap. NATO NBMR.1 did not appeal (FRG/It.(briefly French) G.91), so we flew-before-buy armed JP, Gnat, but took surplus, free ex-Uncle Sam Hunter F.6 as FGA.9/FR.10. How sensible.

P.1121 was a product without a berth. Designers doodled lots of them…up to the point where Boards said show me a Buyer. S.Camm long had an 1121 model on his desk: presumably his employer declined PV investment beyond the mock-up. His first scheme had DH Gyron; that died with Fairey F.155T (the Lord and his man Duncan be praised). He then schemed Olympus, but Bristol wanted to be paid. He never troubled his cousins in Coventry to scheme something suitable: they too would have held out for alms.

Fans say it was the lost British F-4.
Like Fairey FD.2 was the lost British Mirage.
And you, BK, bewail TSR.2 as the lost…opportunity.

Please remember where the money came from…it came from your antecedents’ taxes. This myth of UK “leadership” rests on types, many aided one way or another by Uncle Sam. Money (Lend/Lease, the 1946 Loan (the one G.Brown settled in 2006), MDAP/MSP/MWDP), or exchange know-how/patent access…such as NACA aerofoils. When we had to stump up ourselves, the Deterrent took first dibs.

In this category of Joint Force Support, 1950s-1960s leadership was with Northrop/GE on F-5A/J85. PV. Money, Sir Sydney, where mouth was.

Thanks guys. That should go next to the TSR2 to emphasise how the goverment destroyed the worlds leaders in aviation.

Those were the days. In those days Cranfield had a fantastics collection of airframes and engines. With the P1121, I recall having to trundle the nose section on its trolley into approximate postion in front of the main fuselage so I could take similar photos. As I recall, it is essentially a bare shell with just some lengths of tube installed. I guess that as a museum artifact its value lies in illustrating the story of UK government policy towards aviation in the 1950s.

And here is a photo I took of it at Cranfield.

There is a photo on this thread: https://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?40768-RAF-Museum-Cosford-Hidden-Treasures&p=625714#post625714