The Folland Midge was a small,
swept-wing British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
subsonic light
fighter aircraft
Fighter aircraft are fixed-wing military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat. In military conflict, the role of fighter aircraft is to establish air superiority of the battlespace. Domination of the airspace above a battlefield ...
prototype originally developed as a concept demonstrator for the successful
Folland Gnat
The Folland Gnat is a British compact swept-wing subsonic fighter aircraft that was developed and produced by Folland Aircraft. Envisioned as an affordable light fighter in contrast to the rising cost and size of typical combat aircraft, it wa ...
.
Design and development
The Midge and Gnat were the creation of
W.E.W. "Teddy" Petter, a British aircraft designer who had gained wide recognition for his design of the
English Electric Canberra
The English Electric Canberra is a British first-generation, jet-powered medium bomber. It was developed by English Electric during the mid- to late 1940s in response to a 1944 Air Ministry requirement for a successor to the wartime de Havil ...
bomber and
Lightning
Lightning is a naturally occurring electrostatic discharge during which two electric charge, electrically charged regions, both in the atmosphere or with one on the land, ground, temporarily neutralize themselves, causing the instantaneous ...
supersonic interceptor. Petter had grown suspicious of the trend towards bigger and more expensive combat aircraft, and he felt that a small, simple fighter would offer the advantages of low purchase and operational costs. New lightweight turbojet engines were being developed that would be able to power such small fighters.
[The Folland Gnat / HAL Ajeet](_blank)
, Greg Goebel's Vectorsite.
Petter was unable to pursue this vision at
English Electric, so he left to become managing director and chief designer of
Folland Aircraft
Folland Aircraft was a British aircraft manufacturing company which was active between 1937 and 1963.
History
British Marine Aircraft Limited was formed in February 1936 to produce Sikorsky S-42-A flying boats under licence in the UK. The ...
. In 1951, using company funds, he began work on his lightweight fighter concept, which was designated the
"Fo-141 Gnat". The Gnat was to be powered by a
Bristol BE.22 Saturn turbojet with thrust. However, the Saturn was cancelled, and so Petter's unarmed proof-of-concept demonstrator for the Gnat was powered by the less powerful
Armstrong Siddeley Viper
The Armstrong Siddeley Viper is a British turbojet engine developed and produced by Armstrong Siddeley and then by its successor companies Bristol Siddeley and Rolls-Royce Limited. It entered service in 1953 and remained in use with the Roya ...
101 with thrust. The demonstrator was designated Fo-139 "Midge". The Midge,
serial number
A serial number is a unique identifier assigned incrementally or sequentially to an item, to ''uniquely'' identify it.
Serial numbers need not be strictly numerical. They may contain letters and other typographical symbols, or may consist enti ...
''G-39-1'', first flew on 11 August 1954 from
Boscombe Down
MoD Boscombe Down ' is the home of a military aircraft testing site, on the southeastern outskirts of the town of Amesbury, Wiltshire, England. The site is managed by QinetiQ, the private defence company created as part of the breakup of the Def ...
, Wiltshire, with
Teddy Tennant at the controls, and proved to be an excellent aircraft.
The Midge had a number of advanced features, such as hydraulically powered "flaperons", main landing gear that could be used as airbrakes, and a one-piece canopy that hinged over an inner armoured windscreen. Despite the low-powered engine, the little jet could break Mach 1 in a dive and was very agile.
The Midge was evaluated by pilots from Canada, India, Jordan, New Zealand, and the US Air Force, and was almost universally praised. The Midge had performed a total of 220 flights when it was destroyed in a fatal crash on 26 September 1955, with a Swiss pilot at the controls.
"The Midge Accident"
''Flight'' 7 October 1955 However, the Midge had demonstrated that Petter's lightweight fighter concept had much going for it. Folland went on to develop a full-scale Gnat prototype, also using company funds.Satellite in the Sky
''Satellite in the Sky'' is a 1956 British CinemaScope science fiction film in Warner Color, produced by Edward J. Danziger and Harry Lee Danziger, directed by Paul Dickson, and starring Kieron Moore, Lois Maxwell, Donald Wolfit, and Bryan Forb ...
''. The Midge portrays a fictional jet fighter used to test an experimental rocket fuel.
Specifications
See also
Notes
References
Folland Midge
External links
{{:Portal:British aircraft since World War II
1950s British experimental aircraft
Midge
A midge is any small fly, including species in several families of non-mosquito Nematoceran Diptera. Midges are found (seasonally or otherwise) on practically every land area outside permanently arid deserts and the frigid zones. Some mid ...
Single-engined jet aircraft
Aircraft first flown in 1954