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Hawker Tempest Mk II


olda homola

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You're going to find it difficult; 247 Squadron got them, first, in September, 1945, and 183 (who were re-numbered to 54) got them in November. Apparently they'd been held in storage in anticipation of the Tiger Force, which never happened, of course; other Squadrons (as far as I can tell, only the Fassberg Wing, of 16, 26, and 33 Squadrons) got them in 1946. A great number (55?) went to the Indian Air Force. In fact the first batch (50 - MW374-423, of which 27 went to India) were built by the Bristol Aeroplane Company, at Weston-super-Mare.

Edgar

Edited by Edgar
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The first 100 Tempest IIs built at Langley were MW735 to MW856 (with a couple of gaps) and were delivered between November 44 and September 45. Just to clear the confusion, the batch with earlier serials (MW375 to 423 and MW435) were built in parallel, by Bristol, and delivered between March and August 45.

The only frontline squadrons to receive aircraft from this Langley batch were, as Edgar says, 183 (re-numbered 54) and 247 Sqns, at Chilbolton. The Station Flight there had a couple including one which (MW835) was Wg Cdr R.P.Beamont's personal aircraft 'RB'. Half a dozen went to 13 OTU (never figured out that one as it was a medium bomber OTU), a few more were allocated to CFE, ETPS, Ferry Units and six went out to Khartoum for trials with A&AEE. 46 were stored at MUs until 1948 when sold back to Hawker for refurbishment and onwards sale to India.

So, I guess photo opportunities were limited. There is a relatively well-known air to air of HF-M MW798, the RAFM has a shot of HF-T MW832 on its belly, the Public Archives of Canada have a shot of MW833's (HF-H) presentation as 'Canadian DCMs'. I used the shot of HF-M plus MW800 HF-V (S/L Jensen's aircraft) and one of HF-X MW774 in 'The Typhoon and Tempest Story' (1988). A shot of the latter aircraft appeared in John Rawlings' 'Fighter Squadrons'. After years of searching I found a 247 sqn aircraft, ZY-H MW798 (it was HF-M later) and that was used in the Air-Britain 247 Sqn history 'Rise from the East'. A very rare shot of one of the 13 OTU Tempests apeared in Aviation News, June 2004.

It was a similar story with the Bristol built aircraft, although 7 of then did reach 26 Sqn in BAFO, Germany and two of those late flew with 33 sqn and went out to FEAF withat unit.

Were you looking for anything in particular?

CT

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  • 10 years later...

Hello!

 

This is very old thread. But when looking something else found some Tempest II photos on Polish museum Muzeum Lotnictwa Polskiego digital collection:

 

Łuczak 305-304 Sq

https://muzeumlotnictwa.pl/index.php/digitalizacja/katalog/1569

There seems to be 3 photos of Tempest II there, one shows serial ending 796(?) (EDIT or is it 736? If so ignore the next sentence) and unit code is E-something (see below). For some reason the code on landing gear cover seems not to be a match to the serial.

 

I do not know if these are new or rare or even interesting. Found this thread when trying to search info what these pictures were.

 

Cheers,

Kari

 

spacer.png

Edited by Kari Lumppio
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