Hawker Sea Hawk F.1 VP422
A much published photograph of an early Sea
Hawk. The Sea Hawk was developed from the
Hawker P.1040. The RAF
never did invoke much interest in this range of fighters and hence it
was left up to the
Admiralty to exploit the design. Since Hawkers were ramping up
for Hunter
production at
the time, most of the production of Sea Hawks was laid off to
subsidiary Armstrong
Whitworth.
Sea Hawks, as part of the Fleet Air Arm fired their first shots
in anger during the
Suez Crisis of
1956. Considerable numbers of Sea Hawks were exported to
the Netherlands,
Germany
and India.