The Royal Navy Historic Flight, Founded in 1972 and based at RNAS
Yeovilton, stood down on March 31st 2019. It has displayed some of
Britain’s most iconic naval aircraft, including the Swordfish, Sea
Hawk, Sea Fury and Firefly. Over the next few months responsibility for
maintaining and flying the aircraft is being transferred to the charity
Navy Wings, securing their long-term future, flying as civilian rather
than military aircraft. The charity has supported the Flight for over
25 years with annual grants and donations. Additionally, the charity
has supplemented the Flight with its own naval heritage aircraft,
including a Hawker Sea Fury and de Havilland Sea Vixen.
The Aviation Historian
In issue 27 Richard Seth -Smith, son of Hawker test
pilot Kenneth Seth-Smith killed in a Typhoon accident, tells the full
story of that aircraft’s rear fuselage structural problems as uncovered
by Hawker and the RAE. Other articles that caught the Editor’s eye
cover the politics of the Concorde by Prof Keith Hayward, Willy
Messerschmitt’s post war jets, Leslie Baynes supersonic swing-wing
projects of the 1940s and an improbable French jet powered rotary wing
aircraft of 1910! - yes, really. Issue 28 included a Keith Hayward
article on the politics of the Airbus A300 and its rivals from BAC. (In
Issue 29 he will cover the politics of the P.1127), aero medical
aspects of the vertically launched Bachem Natter and the UK development
of heavy airborne cannon from 1914 to 1939.