Hawk 40th Anniversary

[LOMCEVAK]

On the 21st August 1974 the first Hawk T Mk1, XX154, flew for the first time from Dunsfold in the capable hands of Duncan Simpson. Therefore, today is the 40th anniversary of that notable event.

XX154 is still flying from Boscombe Down, mainly used by ETPS for training test pilots and Flight Test Engineers. As of today it has flown 5516 hours, and it did fly today from Boscombe and I believe it was seen in the skies over both Dunsfold and RAF Valley.

The RAF took delivery of the first aircraft in November 1976 and the first course to fly the Hawk at 4 FTS, RAF Valley, commenced in July 1977. That is an interesting timescale when compared to some later procurement programmes.

[Dengue_Dude]

Does this mean the Gnats are gone . . . ;)

[Wander00]

I recall turning up at a Kemble airshow to find that they were marking the 40th Anniversary of the Gnat. I asked at the Gnat" enclosure if former students were included and was invited in. Watched the Reds of that year display in front of may former Arrows from the Gnat years, and when one of them said "Red ? is 6" out of position", he meant it. Also met several instructors from my Gnat course days. Gold plated memory.

[Dengue_Dude]

In all seriousness, hat's off to the Hawk, the crews and those who have maintained it at all levels.

It's been a superb training platform and doing well in its latest iterations.

[Wander00]

I certainly enjoyed my 3 or 4 Hawk flights, especially the "Repeat Ex 1" from the Gnat, in a Hawk and with the same QFI, who by then was the Station Commander

[Speedstra]

Everybody should have a Hawk........
Enjoyed every minute when flying it at ETPS.
greetz,
Speedy

[Bob Viking]

I often get treated to people whinging about the Hawk but as far as I'm concerned it's a bloody great training aircraft and far superior to it's competitors. It's no surprise it has shown such longevity.
I may be slightly biased though.
BV (1755 Hawk hours and counting, also A2 on T1, T2 and 115 and T1 QWI).

[Typhoon93]

The Hawk is a great aircraft - can't understand why anyone who claims to be interested in military jets would complain about it to be honest, although that's just my opinion.

[OldAgeandTreachery]

I remember seeing a Hawk,XX154?, at Luqa in the summer of 1975. It was doing Hot trials and I think it also flew out of Cairo.

I didn't work on them but handled quite a few through VASF at Kinloss. We had a detachment of nine, from Valley,(no groundcrew)for a week and the most striking thing I remember, apart from their serviceability, was the toolkit for the det ------A screwdriver and an open ended spanner! All nine aircraft flew twice a day for three days and all that was required was fuel,oil and oxygen.

Compare that to a det of four JPs for the same length of time and they came with a complete shift of linies armed with portable toolkits and a large box of spares.

[newt]

Always known as "the Pisspot" amongst the Hunter pilots at Brawdy! Still have a copy of the Pisspot song somewhere!:ok:

[BEagle]

The Gnat was a complex little beast, with a pitch system invented by the devil. Very short on range and very twitchy to fly in formation, although it had a sensational roll rate. It had classic swept wings handling, an excellent compass system and it flew like a knife through butter at low level. It also had the superb offset TACAN system. But we spent most our time practising emergency procedures and very little on applied flying.

The Hunter T7 was huge in comparison. Much easier to fly than the Gnat, but with a cockpit from the stone age. Once you'd mastered strapping in to the ancient bang seat, the Hunter F6 was even easier to fly, particularly in formation and had a nice big engine! The gyro gunsight was masterpiece of design, but the GGSR camera with those wretched cine mags was certainly not. Not much in the way of navigation systems in the TWU jets; most had Rebecca DME and UHF only radio. The Mk 9 had ADF (not that anyone ever used it except for listening to radio stations) and only a few had TACAN. But we rarely flew anything except day low level visual navigation, so who cared about navaids? The only real flaw was the fuel gauging system; also the fuel transfer could occasionally play up. But everyone forgave it that - the single seat Hunter was probably every pilot's favourite during training in those days.

I flew the Hawk in 1980 when it was relatively new. It had an abysmal compass system (later replaced with AHARS), the lateral stability was inadequate (later improved with a fin extension), so that it was less stable than the Hunter when weaponeering. The engine response was dull compared with the Gnat or Hunter (the Reds use a modified engine control system), but it was really, really easy to fly and had excellent range. We didn't need to do as much in-flight emergency training and gone were the horrors of manual reversion. But for some stupid reason it didn't have offset TACAN and I never understood why that was. The gunsight wasn't as good as that fitted to the Hunter, but at least it had a much better cine system! Roll rate wasn't a patch on the Gnat, but it had higher 'g' limits - until They realised that we were gobbling up fatigue. I understand that the CFS Hawk course included a +8 g demo, but that was probably binned after a few years?

The Hawk is undoubtedly a better trainer than either the Gnat or Hunter. But somehow it rather lacks the soul of its classic forebears...:(

[Onceapilot]

Thank you Hawk! Got me through, and enjoyed every moment. A great machine, thanks to all involved!:ok:

OAP

[Courtney Mil]

Good summary there, BEags.

Hawk has been an excellent trainer.

[gzornenplatz]

I think someone's missing the point slightly here. The Gnat was an excellent trainer for the operational aircraft of the time. It had similar flying qualities and vices to the Lightning, F4, Jaguar and Buccaneer. When the Tornado arrived it was much easier to fly. The dangerous period was when the Hawk was training pilots for the older jets. It just did not have the same swept-wing characteristics and meant that the OCU instructors had to spend more time teaching them on the operational aircraft.

[newt]

I agree gz. The straight wing characteristics of the Hawk were not ideal if you were going on to something like the Lightning. It was a great trainer when the compass was sorted but it still had deficiencies when considering performance.

Will try to find the song!:ok:

[Naskopi]

Orders for just under 1000, should break that barrier soon - how many other British jets (Hunter excluded) can boast that?

[LOMCEVAK]

A few other observations on the historical chronolgy.

When the Hawk first flew 40 years ago, it then replaced the Gnat (and Hunter) and the in-service fighters were the Lightning and Phantom. Today, it is being replaced by the Hawk T Mk2 and the in-service fighter is the Typhoon. The significant advances over this 40 year period have been in weapon systems and avionics; the performance aspects are very similar. And the T1 is still an adequate trainer for students whose next aircrat is the Typhoon (as would have been the Gnat or Hunter).

40 years before the Hawk T1 entered service was 1936. The main trainer used then immediately prior to students converting to fighters was the Avro Tutor and the in-service fighters were the Hawker Fury, Hawker Demon and Gloster Gauntlet. I think that someone trained on the Avro Tutor (or the Harvard which replaced it) would have stuggled if they moved directly on to the Lightning!

In aviation a 40 year time period is not what it was.

[Lonewolf_50]

One of the Hawk's relatives is doing fine work these days on this side of the pond. There were some bugs to work out as our Navy introduced them (a good friend of mine was in the program office) and the nose wheel steering issues were still haunting our training wings well into the 2000's. That carping considered, it's been a good trainer for us and should be for quite a long time. The A to C mod was a sumbitch to get funded and programmed in a timely fashion, but it's an upgrade that is well worth the investment.

T-45 A/C Goshawk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_T-45_Goshawk).

Trying for an OK 3 wire. (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/T-45_Goshawk_Side-View.jpg/220px-T-45_Goshawk_Side-View.jpg)(Wait, is that a picture of the hover mode for training Harrier pilots? :E )

Flying about the desolate wastes of southern Texas in prep for flying over the desert wastes of the Middle East ... (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/T-45A_Goshawk_04.jpg/220px-T-45A_Goshawk_04.jpg):p

Goshawk is expected to remain in service until 2035.
Based on how long it took us to sundown the T-2C, I'll offer a small wager that T-45C's will still be flying in 2040, if we still have jet pilots in the USN then and haven't replaced our airwings with XB-47's and such pilotless hardward. :p

If I lose that wager, and it's retired before 2035, anyone still alive may have tequila shots on me whenever we meet! :ok: That would still make Hawk over sixty years old and still in active service! Pretty good.

[Davef68]

The last new design from Kingston hasn't done too badly, has it?

[54Phan]

Wow! 40 years already. I remember reading about it just coming into service. From what I have read and heard, it is an excellent trainer, and I hope that its development continues.

(I have no personal attachment to the Hawk, except that we entered the service of Aunt Betty at around the same time, albeit in different capacities and on different continents.)

[BEagle]

Well, the original idea had been to replace the Gnat in the advanced training role....with the Jaguar! I can just remember seeing a poster in about 1968 which showed a Jaguar in grey and dayglo......:uhoh: Fortunately They realised that it would be far too complex, so along came an Air Staff Requirement which led to the HS1182.

The original name was to have been 'Tercel' - a male falcon. Fortunately They said No - so HS1182 became the Hawk T Mk 1.

[Courtney Mil]

The dangerous period was when the Hawk was training pilots for the older jets. It just did not have the same swept-wing characteristics and meant that the OCU instructors had to spend more time teaching them on the operational aircraft.

That was an urban myth. I remember being told that my colleagues and I would struggle to fly the F4 after the Hawk. Our OCU results were no different to the historical norm and there was no convex extension. It came from people that THOUGHT the Hawk was too easy and their jets could only be flown by others like them. Later, as an instructor at Chivenor, I was still sending guys from Hawk to Lightning, F4, Harrier et al with very good results.

[gzornenplatz]

Courtney, I think you're forgetting the intervening stage of TWU on the Hunter, a true swept wing aircraft until replaced by the Hawk.
I was a QFI on the F4 OCU so I saw how the Hawk FTS/Hawk TWU guys had problems with the concept of varying stages of buffet.

[Courtney Mil]

No, I'm talking about straight through Hawk guys. I did fly the Hunter as a holding perk, but I don't accept that learning about buffet in the F4 was a difficult concept to grasp.

Edit: strange though it may seem to you, the buffet levels in the F-15 are so similar to the F-4 that any F-4 pilot would recognise the stable the Eagle came from. But T-38 graduates had no problem whatsoever in recognising F-15 buffet levels. Yes, I know the differences, just an illustration.

[Old Fella]

Phil has the distinction of being the Guiness Book of Records "Oldest Active Fighter Pilot".

He had this to say at the time, during 2013. As far as I am aware he still flys the Hawk at age 62 +.


‘Let’s get one thing straight. I’m not special. I’m just
myself – one who loves flying fast jets; focused on
shared thinking and positive pilot training outcomes. It’s
simple. Young pilot minds ‘get it’ when you understand
their fertile thinking. It’s the ability to identify the needs
of those around you. Communication and humility – it’s
not hard!
- SQNLDR Phil Frawley, Active Reserve Pilot, March 2013.

[RodfjH]

I loved the Omani versions, especially the single seat Mk203 with a radar in the nose. Awesome little jet.

[Wander00]

I still recall one "swept wing" lesson on the Gnat "Don't tighten the final turn". I did one day, having been blown in toward the runway by a stronger cross wind than I had allowed for. As we sank like a lift, me fresh out of ideas, a Rhodesian voice in the back said two things - "I have control" and after he had unloaded and rolled level - " If you had been on your own, you would be adjectival dead". Never forgot, and even now as I turn final in a glider, VW (with whom I am back in touch) is sitting on my shoulder whispering "Don't tighten the turn"

[sandozer]

Often wondered why they settled for twin nose wheels on the USN variant of the Hawk, maybe the extra load of carrier landing and takeoff?

Nice video here of rookies making they first landing on.

Angle of Attack - Excerpt 1 from Thomas Lennon Films on Vimeo (http://player.vimeo.com/video/31549908?autoplay=1)

[54Phan]

The twin nosewheels on the T-45 have to do with the American catapault launch system, i.e. a tow bar.

[newt]

THE PISSPOT SONG

The trouble with Hawk blokes is they don't understand
That to fly in a Hunter it takes a sharp hand-
So stick to your Pisspots and pull 7G
You can pull all you like but you'll never catch me!

You sit on the runway awaiting the kick
But the engine's so gutless it just makes me sick-
450's the limit with pylons hung under
If you wanna go quickly, you must fly the Hunter!

Can you tell me the problem, oh why's it so slow?
I opened the throttle and it just doesn't go!
I aborted the takeoff, Oh why can it be?
I got overtaken by a JP Mk 3!

The blue note is unique, a sound we all love
We've decided to rename the Hawk the Dove!
It's slow and it's boring, in fact it's real tame,
So come fly the Hunter, now that's a real game!

The sound of the Adour's like a fart in the bath.
You say that it's powerfull, well don't make me laugh!
It's like half a Jaguar and that's bad enough!
Your sure to get lost when your TACAN goes duff!

But the Hunter's not magic, it always breaks down.
The best bit is getting your feet on the ground.
And that is the end of our little refrain,
So I'll open my bottle and get pissed again!

Not sure of the tune but maybe someone can enlighten us?

[sandozer]

54 Phan

"The twin nosewheels on the T-45 have to do with the American catapault launch system, i.e. a tow bar."

Gotcha, thanks,

[54Phan]

My pleasure. It's nice to contribute something to the conversation.

[Heathrow Harry]

THE amazing thing about the Hawk is not that its a great aircraft but we actual sold a load overseas for once

[Courtney Mil]

It's funny how folk that never flew an aircraft can be such experts about it. :cool:

[The Helpful Stacker]

It's funny how folk that never flew an aircraft can be such experts about

Par for the course on Pprune.

If you think this thread is bad there is another kicking about full of virologists and other allied health professionals who apparently trained at the Daily Mail School of Nursing and Medicine.

[newt]

Well I flew it Courtney!:ok:

[walbut]

All this brings back memories of HSA Brough in the early 70's, writing the production test schedule for the flying controls in the Hawk wing and wondering how much backlash to allow in the flap linkage.

Watching Tom Robinson battering the undercarriage doors on the first wing with a big hammer in an attempt to meet the steps and gaps limits.

Listening to Eric Lewis from Brough arguing with Bill Allen and Marshall Smith from Kingston about the need to seal the ribs that separated the collector tank from the wing tanks. They didn't believe Eric when he said it was necessary or the fuel would not transfer properly. It tooks lots of PRC and someone with long arms to fix the first wing when we finally started to test it.

Watching XX154 fly at Farnborough and thinking theres a bit of me up there.

Alrthough I thought I had retired from Brough for ever at the end of 2009, in a few weeks time I will be starting my third session as a contractor in the same department I worked in 40 years ago. In all the time that Flight Systems Department has been in existence at Brough, now over 50 years, there have only been 5 heads of the dept, (and I wasnt one of them)

Walbut

[diginagain]

Well I flew it Courtney!Why do I get an image of Yoda when I read that? :)

[Courtney Mil]

Good on you, Newt. :ok:

"Flew it I did" perhaps? :)

[CoffmanStarter]

As a keen young Air Cadet ... many, many years ago ... I still remember an utterly enthralling lecture on the Hawk given by a certain F/L John Thrope. I believe he had just started (must have been early/mid 70's) on the Hawk Test Programme at Boscombe Down. I met him again at RAF Manston some years later when he dropped in with a Hawk for the weekend (he came from Deal Kent and went to school in Dover). A wonderful and most generous Gentleman.

I believe he was later promoted to Group Captain ... But sadly no longer with us.

[Double Hydco]

As a nineteen year old AATC my first posting was Chivenor in the late 1980's. After not very long I was a regular at both squadrons to fly on the morning weather check.

I've some great memories of bombing around Wales at low level, making a simulated attack on HMS Gloucester sailing down the Bristol Channel and flying with an USAF exchange officer on a target towing sortie.

Two stand out trips though; accompanying Simon Meade in XX329 for his "bonding" day with the Red Arrows. He flew two sorties with them, while the Reds ground team showed me around. He even bought me lunch in the feeder, and ran through his solo routine on the way home.

Also asking my boss, SLOPS Stu Robinson to fly the weather check on my last day before my posting. We chased the Brawdy weather checker around Wales in XX263, and he let me fly some aero's on the way back to Chivenor!

Fabulous stuff.......

[Courtney Mil]

Happy days, DH. I loved doing the weather check and made sure I had someone in the back on every possible occasion. So much fun to show folks what it was all for. :ok:

[Double Hydco]

Indeed, happy days Courtney. I can't imagine it being so straightforward to fly multiple pax flights in todays RAF (although I maybe doing them a disservice, as they've had a lot on their plate over the past couple of decades).

One simple form, get a signature from the SMO, borrow the ejection video from the safety equipment people (or was it squadron ops?), and another signature to say I'd watched it, and hey presto I was in business!

They only thing that I didn't much care for was trying to squeeze into the immersion suit. Always had the feeling they'd have to cut me out of it after the trip.

DH

[newt]

Happy days indeed! Leave Brawdy and dive down to Devon to bounce the Chivenor weather check then race up to North Wales to get the Valley weather check! Usually in a Mk6 but did take my Dad with me in the T7 a couple of times!:ok: