Hawker Sea Fury

During the Korean War in the 1950s, four Sea Furies of the RN fought eight MiG-15 jet fighters. They shot down one and damaged two more for no loss to themselves. During the same conflict under difficult conditions, the Australian aircraft carrier Sydney, operating alongside other allied carriers, flew a record number of daily operations with her Sea Furies and Fireflies on combat air patrols and bomber missions. A fine testament to this remarkable fighter which was regarded by its pilots and service crews as the ultimate in piston-engined fighter development.

The Sea Fury was designed by Sidney Camm of Hawker Aircraft Ltd, designer of the famous Hurricane. The Fury was a direct development of his powerful ground attack, tank-busting Typhoon of World War Two. To cope with compressibility problems associated with high speed, he designed a thinner wing and monocoque fuselage to create the Tempest, a very fast machine that could outrun the German V1 flying bomb, shooting down over 600 of them over Britain in 1945.

The earlier chance-arrival of a Focke-Wulf 190 A-3 in England in 1942 led to a lighter-weight concept that ended up as the Fury. By the time it was flying, Air Forces were turning their thoughts to jets, hence the modification of this machine in 1945 to a carrier-based version, the Sea Fury, which would fit contemporary carrier technology and practice. As with much aeroplane development, the Sea Fury was spawned via engine development. The original Typhoon was built around what was for the times, the frighteningly huge 24-cylinder, 2,000hp horizontal “H” Napier Sabre engine. The powerplant that finally found its way into the Fury was the mighty Bristol 18-cylinder, sleeve-valve Centaurus air-cooled radial engine of 2,400hp.

A huge five-bladed propeller pulled the Sea Fury along at 460mph at 18,000ft and the FB.11 version used in combat was armed with four 20mm Hispano Mk. V cannon in the wings and with hardpoints beneath for two 500lb bombs or eight rockets and two 90-gallon drop-tanks, which extended its range to well over 1,000 miles. The Sea Fury was a delight to fly; controls were beautifully light and coordinated, making aerobatics pure pleasure–translating into highly competitive manoeuvrability in combat conditions.

Like most high-performance military aircraft, however, the Sea Fury was no push-over. For instance, over-enthusiastic use of throttle on take-off would create an embarrassing, knee-trembling take-off due to the effect of torque from the large prop; and if the oil temperature gauge showed the slightest drop and the pilot noticed it too late, a forced landing would be an inevitable consequence.

The RAN took delivery of 101 Sea Furies. During the Korean War, they operated with 805 Sqdn from HMAS Sydney (shown in this David Marshall painting) and 808 Sqdn from HMAS Vengeance. 850 Sqdn served aboard both carriers between 1953-54. RAN Sea Furies were replaced by the RAN’s first jet fighter, the Sea Venom, from 1954.

Hawker Aircraft was originally The Sopwith Aviation Company and started manufacturing aircraft before World War One. Englishman, Tom Sopwith, employed Australian Harry Hawker who contributed much to many of the famous WW1 Sopwith machines such as the Camel. At war’s end, Sopwith went into voluntary liquidation, the company becoming L.G. Hawker Engineering Company Ltd. Hawker, who was the first to attempt a non-stop Atlantic crossing in 1919, was tragically killed in 1921 flying a Nieuport Goshawk racing biplane shown below.

Harry Hawker

The Nieuport Goshawk