Hawker Tempest
The Hawker Tempest was a British single-seat fighter that began as the Typhoon II, a rework of the Hawker Typhoon with a thinner laminar-flow wing to cure the performance the Typhoon lost at altitude. The Sabre-powered Mk V entered service in January 1944 and made its name against the V-1 flying bombs and on armed reconnaissance over north-west Europe. The Centaurus-powered Mk II and the Sabre V Mk VI arrived too late for the war but served afterwards, including transfers to India and Pakistan; in all, 1,401 Tempests were built.
Why It Mattered
The Tempest was Hawker's answer to the Typhoon's failings at altitude: Sydney Camm's team kept the big airframe and its Sabre engine but gave the design a new and much thinner wing. Begun as the Typhoon II and renamed as it diverged, it became, in the RAF Museum's words, one of the most powerful high-performance fighters to see operational service in the Second World War. It reached its first squadrons early in 1944, weeks before the V-1 offensive opened, and its speed at low level made it the RAF's best chance of catching the flying bombs. Aviation author Francis K. Mason wrote that by VE Day the Tempest was commonly accepted as the best-performing RAF fighter then in operational service.
Design Notes
Work began in March 1940, as an attempt to solve the problems that appeared when the Typhoon reached very high speeds, especially in the dive. Camm's new wing was thinner and semi-elliptical, using a laminar-flow section; because it had no room for fuel tanks, the fuselage was lengthened to take a new tank ahead of the cockpit. Still unsure of the Sabre, Hawker prepared prototypes around five different engines, which defined the mark numbers: Sabre IV for the Mk I, Centaurus for the Mk II, two Griffon variants for the Mk III and Mk IV, and a developed Sabre II for the Mk V. In the event only the Mk V and Mk II reached production, the Mk V keeping the in-line Sabre and four 20 mm cannon, the Mk II adopting the Bristol Centaurus radial in a close-fitting cowling. The Mk VI, with the more powerful Sabre V, also entered production but too late to see active service, and went to five RAF squadrons in the Middle East.
Operational History
The prototype Mk V was the first Tempest to fly, on 2 September 1942, and recorded 466 mph at 24,500 feet during its early trials. The first production Mk V flew on 21 June 1943; No. 486 Squadron began to receive the type in January 1944 and, with No. 3 Squadron, became operational in April. After a brief period over France in the week after D-Day, the Newchurch Wing was withdrawn to meet the V-1 flying bombs, which came in at around 2,000 feet and 400 mph. Tempest pilots claimed 800 of the 1,771 V-1s credited to the RAF between June and August 1944, 638 of them by the Newchurch Wing alone. Once the V-1 campaign ended, the squadrons returned to the continent on armed reconnaissance and ground attack, work in which, unlike the Typhoon, the Tempest could also hold its own in air-to-air combat. Its seven squadrons in the 2nd Tactical Air Force claimed 240 confirmed victories and thirteen probables, among them at least twenty Me 262 jets and a number of Arado Ar 234s. Production followed the same order: 801 Mk Vs were built at Langley, 452 Mk IIs — 402 by Hawker and 50 by Bristol — and 142 Mk VIs.
Afterlife
Neither later mark saw wartime service: the Mk IIs joined the occupation forces in Germany, while many were tropicalised and sent to Asia against Japan, only for the war to end before they could be deployed. In 1947 the RAF transferred 89 Tempest FB IIs to the Indian Air Force, and 24 more went to the Pakistan Air Force in 1948; both countries flew the type until 1953, the year the RAF's own Tempests were retired. The RAF's last Tempests worked through the 1950s mainly as target tugs; the RAF Museum's TT.5 is one, an airframe that spent its operational life towing targets for air-to-air gunnery practice. The Museum also holds a Mk II at Cosford which served in what is now Pakistan, was transferred to the Indian Air Force, and returned to the United Kingdom in 1979. One Tempest flies again: Mk II MW763, an ex-Indian Air Force aircraft brought back to Britain in 1979 and restored over decades by a succession of owners, made its first post-restoration flight at Sywell in October 2023, the first flight by any Tempest in more than half a century.