Lieutenant Commander Chris Götke, AFC, RN, commanding officer of The Royal Navy Historic Flight, displaying the Fly Navy Heritage Trust's Hawker Sea Fury T.20, VX281,G-RNHF, in the sky above Old Warden Aerodrome, Bedfordshire, during the Shuttleworth Fly Navy Airshow 2018.
VX281 was the second of sixty Sea Fury T.20 aircraft built as weapons trainers for the Fleet Air Arm. Delivered to the Royal Navy in early 1950 she served with 736 and 738 Naval Air Squadrons at RNAS Culdrose to conduct pilot training for the front-line Sea Fury units. However, following an accident in mid 1950 and subsequent repair she saw no further Royal Naval use, instead being sold to the West German Government in 1960 as a target-towing aircraft.
Finally retired in 1974 she was bought by warbird collector Doug Arnold who, in 1977, sold the aircraft to Spencer Flack who based the aircraft at Elstree. Flack operated the Sea Fury until July 1980 exporting her to the USA.
There then followed a series of changes in ownership: to Liberty Aero Corps at Santa Monica in March 1988; to Wally Fisk’s Amjet Aircraft Corporation at St.Paul, Minnesota by September 1993 and finally to Ed Zager’s Zager Aircraft Corporation in California in July 2000. In 2007 the aircraft was purchased and shipped to the UK.
The job of re-assembling and testing the aircraft was given to Kennet Aviation who rebuilt VX281 (registered as G-RNHF), finally being awarded its Permit to Fly in February 2011. Now owned by Naval Aviation Limited (the business arm of the Fly Navy Heritage Trust), the aircraft is loaned to the RNHF to perform at Air Shows as well as carrying out conversion training for RNHF pilots moving up to the single seat Sea Fury VR930. VR930 is currently not airworthy as it needs its Bristol Centaurus engine to be rebuilt or replaced!
VX281 is currently painted in the markings of Sea Fury F.10 TF912 '120/VL' of 799 NAS/50th Training Air Group, based at RNAS Yeovilton in 1949.
Following an emergency landing at RNAS Culdrose Air Day in 2014, for which Lt. Cmdr. Götke was awarded the Air Force Cross (AFC), the aircraft airframe was repaired and a refurbished engine fitted in order to return her to flight during the early autumn of 2017.
The Hawker Fury was designed to a RAF requirement for a ‘light Tempest’, which they had found to be very effective as a ground attack aircraft. A lighter version, it was argued, would make a good fighter. The Fury was built in the same general arrangement as the Hawker Tempest but with a reduced wingspan and with the Tempest II’s Bristol Centaurus engine, the first production aircraft flying in 1946.
With the end of the Second World War, the RAF decided that they would not proceed with this aircraft in favour of waiting to re-equip with jets. At that time the Royal Navy felt that the operation of jet aircraft from ships flight decks was still something of an unknown quantity and instead specified a Naval variant of the Fury.
Re-designed with a strong point for a catapult strop, an arrester hook, folding wings and high energy absorption undercarriage the Sea Fury entered Naval service in 1947 as the Sea Fury F.10 (Fighters). Like many aircraft of the day it could employ Rocket Assisted Take Off Gear to help a heavily laden aircraft achieve flying speed from the restricted length of a flight deck.
The Sea Fury was the Fleet Air Arm's last piston-engined fighter to serve in front-line Squadrons. The prototype Sea Fury first flew on 21 February 1945 and carried out deck landing trials on HMS Ocean in October of that year. The first production aircraft (Mk.F.10) flew on 15 August 1946 and the first Squadron, No.807 Naval Air Squadron (NAS), re-equipped with F.10s at the Royal Naval Air Station Culdrose in late 1947. The first Squadron to fly with the FB.11 variant, 802 NAS, re-formed in May 1948. In all, fifty Sea Fury F.10s were built, followed by 615 Sea Fury FB.11s (Fighter Bombers), the last of which came off the production line in November 1952.
A 2-seat weapons trainer variant, the T.20, was also produced with the prototype flying in January 1948. Quite apart from the obvious addition of the rear cockpit fitted with duplicated controls, the T.20 differed from the F.10 and FB.11: the arrester hook and retractable tailwheel unit was were removed.
Mounted between the front and rear cockpits a tripod periscope arrangement developed by Hawker enabled the instructor in the rear cockpit to see what the student in the front seat was viewing through his gyro gunsight.
This was probably all the instructor could see as visibility from the rear cockpit is dire! Two of the Hispano Mk.5 20mm canon were also removed. 60 of these aircraft were built.
Video and Audio content is
Copyright © 2018 High Flight
This video and audio material may not be reproduced in any form (except as the videos Youtube embedded video option on any other website), without written permission.
