The Hawker P.1072 was a
1949 experimental
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, ...
aircraft acting as a test bed for the
Armstrong Siddeley Snarler
The Armstrong Siddeley Snarler was a small rocket engine used for mixed-power experiments with an early turbojet engine. and was the first British liquid-fuelled rocket engine to fly.
Design and development
Unlike other British rocket engin ...
rocket booster engine. It was the prototype Hawker Sea Hawk modified to install the rocket in the tail.
Development
After the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
Hawker was working on a new fighter under their internal designation P.1040 which later became the
Hawker Sea Hawk
The Hawker Sea Hawk is a British single-seat jet day fighter formerly of the Fleet Air Arm (FAA), the air branch of the Royal Navy (RN), built by Hawker Aircraft and its sister company, Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft. Although its design origina ...
.
Armstrong Siddeley had begun work in 1946 to develop a liquid-fuelled rocket motor (to be used as a booster unit for fighters) for the
Ministry of Supply. To investigate the feasibility of rocket-powered fighter aircraft, the original Sea Hawk prototype, ''
VP401'', was converted into a test bed for the
Armstrong Siddeley Snarler
The Armstrong Siddeley Snarler was a small rocket engine used for mixed-power experiments with an early turbojet engine. and was the first British liquid-fuelled rocket engine to fly.
Design and development
Unlike other British rocket engin ...
rocket motor,
[ ] in addition to its normal
Rolls-Royce Nene
The Rolls-Royce RB.41 Nene is a 1940s British centrifugal compressor turbojet engine. The Nene was a complete redesign, rather than a scaled-up Rolls-Royce Derwent"Rolls-Royce Aero Engines" Bill Gunston, Patrick Stephens Limited 1989, , p.111 w ...
turbojet, becoming the P.1072. The P.1040 had a split exhaust which gave space in the tail free for the installation of the rocket.
The Snarler was pump fed rather than by pressurization of the fuel tanks. The installation of the rocket motor required considerable reinforcement of the fuselage as well as completely revised pneumatic and fuel systems. Jet engine fuel capacity was reduced from 395 gal (1,520 L) to 175 gal (675 L) and two tanks for rocket fuel were installed. The cylindrical
liquid oxygen
Liquid oxygen—abbreviated LOx, LOX or Lox in the aerospace, submarine and gas industries—is the liquid form of molecular oxygen. It was used as the oxidizer in the first liquid-fueled rocket invented in 1926 by Robert H. Goddard, an app ...
tank in the forward fuselage had a capacity of 75 gal (288 L), and the water-
methanol tank in the rear fuselage had a capacity of 120 gal (460 L). External differences were limited to a slight bulge in the rear fuselage under the rudder and a fairing on the bottom centerline of the fuselage, covering piping between the tanks and the rocket motor in the tail.
The Rolls-Royce Nene 103 with 5,180 lbf (23.1 kN) of thrust was used for the ferry flights and for takeoff and initial climb. The Snarler rocket which developed 2,000 lbf (8.9 kN) of thrust was first used in flight on 20 November 1950. There were limitations on the six flights were made using the rocket motor before a minor explosion damaged the aircraft. Soon after, the British government decided that turbojets with
reheat
An afterburner (or reheat in British English) is an additional combustion component used on some jet engines, mostly those on military supersonic aircraft. Its purpose is to increase thrust, usually for supersonic flight, takeoff, and combat ...
(afterburner) would be used instead of rocket power.
Specifications (P.1072)
See also
Notes
References
* Hannah, Donald. ''Hawker FlyPast Reference Library''. Stamford, Lincolnshire, UK: Key Publishing Ltd., 1982. .
* James, Derek N. ''Hawker, an Aircraft Album No. 5''. New York: Arco Publishing Company, 1973. . (First published in the UK by Ian Allan in 1972)
* Mason, Francis K. ''Hawker Aircraft since 1920.'' London: Putnam, 1991. (reprinted as .)
{{Hawker Aircraft aircraft
1950s British experimental aircraft
P1072
Mixed-power aircraft
Rocket-powered aircraft