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Aviation History
1954
1954 - 1961.PDF
16 I ALL-WEATHER DEFENDERS Gloster's were about to start production on the camera-equipped F.R.9 and P.R.IO. The company was also hard-pressed widi development work on the great G.A.5 all-weather fighter, now known as the Javelin. Accordingly, it was decided to farm out all work entailed by the development of a Meteor night-fighter to another member of the Hawker Siddeley Group. Sir W. G. Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft, Ltd., of Coventry. This company, who now also make Hunters, Sea Hawks and m\jch else besides, took very few months to turn out the first N.F.H* The first prototype, WA 546, was flown by S/L. E. G. Franklin, D.F.C., A.F.C., the company's chief test pilot, on May 31st, 1950. It was a com pletely new aircraft, although many of its major parts were similar to, or even interchangeable widi, those of some odier Meteors. The wing was very similar to that of the P.R.IO or the old F.3, with a span of 43ft and rounded tips, but the outer panels housed four electrically fired 20 mm guns, disp!aced from die nose by die added interception radar. The fuselage resembled that of the T.7 trainer, with die pilot and navigator in tandem, bodi facing forward, under a massive canopy hinged to starboard. The tail was that of the F.8 day fighter. The prototype NJP.ll at one time appeared with wing-tip tanks, but these never became standard; the considerable internal fuel capacity is invariably supplemented by both ventral and under-wing tanks, as on die single-seat Meteors. The production lis became, in die words of the Hawker Siddeley Group, "the back bone of night fighter defence of the country." The type was also supplied to NATO, for service in France, Belgium and Denmark. On. December 21st, 1952, F/L. J. O. Lancaster, D.F.C., took another new night-fighter mark into die air; diis was die N.F.13, a machine externally almost identical with die N.F.I 1, but specially equipped for work which could not be performed by the earlier machine. It is not operated by Home-based fighter squadrons. The next development was the far-more-effective Meteor N.F.12, which first flew in the hands of S/L. Franklin, on April 21st, 1953. Details of the improvements made are not publishable, but the nose is longer, better streamlined, and of greater internal capacity, and it may be assumed that more power-
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