Firestreak Hunter questions

[John R]

Hawker produced a Hunter fittted with radar and Firesteak missiles and designated P1109 of which two were produced. Both Roy Braybrook and Francis Mason give the registrations as WW594 for P1109A and XF 378 for P1109B. However Frieghtdog Models conversion kit for the F6 gives the registration as WW598 for the P1109A when used by the RAE. Is there an error with the Frieghtdog decals or was it redesignated?

Freightdog also shows it as having no dogtooth on the wing. Is this correct? The only picture I can find appears to show no dogtooth.

At the moment I am torn between the Firestreak version and that from the RAE. The former being more interesting but the latter is prettier!

John

[Jure Miljevic]

Hello John R

Alan W. Hall gives WW594 serial, but implies this is a P1109B as caption of a colour profile for XF378 reads as P1109A. Roger Chesneau in his Hunter book of Aeroguide series lists her as WW594 and also provides her picture. I took several long hard looks at the photo and I cannot see a dogtooth. However, while I could not discern the serial on the aft fuselage, the top portion of its last digit on port main undercarriage door looks like 4 to me. Not much, but I hope it helps and someone with better knowledge will drop by soon anyway. Cheers

Jure

[mikestow]

Hello ,

Just seen your question,and I have built WW594,with 4 dummy Firestreaks  as Hawker P1109A,and it was a definite F6,but with no dog tooth leading edge as it was only the 3rd F6 airframe completed.However it never carried real Firestreaks only dummies for aerodynamic testing.XF378 was the only fully equipped,and did several test firings.That was designated P1109B.Hope this helps?

[Junchan]

According to "HAWKER HUNTER, Biography of a thoroughbred" by Francis K. Mason, WW594 and WW598 were the first production batch of seven F. 6s without dogtooth.

WW594 was P.1109A aerodynamic test aircraft, but she never carried Firestreaks. She was later converted to F.R. 10  and delivered to No. 19 MU on 8 August 1975.

WW598 was the last of the first batch and converted to P.1109A standard for tropical low-altitude gust investigation. She was later converted to FGA. 70A (L.280) and delivered to Lebanese Air Force on 8 December 1975.

XF378 was one of 100 F. 6s produced by Armstrong Whitworth in Coventry. She was completed as P.1109B with full Firestreak missile system, but without dogtooth. She had been tested at Hatfield and Valley in 1957 and finally cannibalized in 1959 due to a fire.

I think only XF378 actually carried Firestreaks. FYI, the third prototype WB202 once carried dummy Firestreaks.

 

Hope this will be of some help.

 

Jun in Tokyo

https://www.flickr.com/photos/horaburo/albums

[John R]

Thank you Junchan. I'm ashamed to say that I actually had that information in the appendices to Francis Mason's book. I had not appreciated that it was there and had only looked at text and photos and had not realised that WW598 was a third example.

There are some posts in Britmodeller that indicate that WW598 was used for the misslie trials.

I also found the picture of WB202 with four dummy Firestreaks in Mason's book. There is also a head on picture of the P1109B  in Braybooks book showing the lateral position of the missiles.

Incidentally there was an F4, XF310, which was fitted with Fairey Fireflash missiles which did not have government backing and which was forbidden to carry RAF markings at Farnborough in case people thought that it did have official backing, although there is a photo of it with RAF markings. It would be interesting to know if this had the same shaped nose as the later F6 version although the F4 carried 4 guns and the link collectors.

John