HF-24 Marut

[Archibald]

In 1955 Kurt Tank left Argentina after the collapse of its good friend the General Peron.He then come to India and drawn a fighter around a pair of Orpheus 12 turbojets (2800 kgp each)
The Marut flew in 1961 but at the time GB no longer considered the Orpheus-12. Nevertheless the country offered India the whole Orpheus 12 program... this was refused, and the Marut was now underpowered...

Fortunately in the whatif world solutions were rapidly found to allow the HF-24 to reach its full potential (and this aircraft had a big potential )

The first batch of Marut mk1 flew with the unreheated Orpheus-3, and the plane was badly underpowered. The flight tests nevertheless proved that the plane was very solid and had good flying caracteristics. So the production line was opened...
right from this moment, it was decided to produce two variants of the plane

- the twin engined variant for ground attack (with better engines, top speed
mach 1.4)
- a single engine variant for interception (with perfromances in the mach 2 category)

The main problem was finding a better engine, but the solution was to come from overseas:  Egypt!

Kurt Tank took contact with its former collegue Messerchmit in the early 60's. At the time, Messerchmit was in Egypt to dra its HA-300 at Helwan. To power it, Egypt had its own indigenous engine, the E-300. Interested by the E-300 to power the fighter Marut, India send a team to Egypt, and a Marut flew with the E-300. The results were disapointing... and even worse, the whole program  collapsed in 1968, when both the E-300 and HA300 ended in failure.
In the end, Egypt and India had MiG-21s powered by the R-11F-300 turbojet. Egypt nevertheless agree to send the former E-300 team in India to licence-build the R-11F-300 powering the MiGs. Following the same path as China with the
WP-7, India managed to have it's own copy of the russian turbojet.
It was installed in the Marut mk2 in 1970, the plane starting to roll of the production line in 1971. Egypt bought 120 Marut mk2 in early 1972, to strengthen its air force before the Kippur war...

The Marut mk3 was to be an improved variant of the mk1, for ground attack. As the Orpheus were too weak, they were replaced by RR/ Turbomeca Adours. India resisted pressions of France and GB to impose the Jaguar. Once again, India bought a licence on the engine and improved it. The Marut mk3 proved  superior to the Jag due to much better aerodynamics, and an uncompromised conception.
In the end, 190 Marut mk.3 were produced for the IAF.

But another variant was to come, the Mk4.
After leaving India in 1967, Kurt Tank came back to Germany and worked at MBB. The firm was part of the Tornado program, which mean they could have a glance at the RB-199 engine. When India wanted to improve the Marut mk2 fighter in 1976, they contacted Tank again. Using it's contacts, he managed to sell RB-199 blue prints to India. Hearing that, GB said to India that if they wanted the RB-199, they have to ask directly. And Rolls royce was allowed to work in collaboration with the Indian governement for a licence building of the RB-199. This was the beginning of a fructuous collaboration still alive today, the LCA (which flew in 1996) beeing powered by the EJ-200...

With the RB-199, performances of the Marut mk.4 were vastly improved. But the radar was still the very, very limited equipment of the MiG-21... in the mid-80's, when the Indian Navy bought the Sea Harrier, the Blue Vixen radar of these aircrafts was mounted on the Marut mk.4, giving birth to
the mk.5. The plane has now become a world class fighter... but it was a bit late!
The mk5 was to be an interim pending the arrival of the LCA but as the latter was late, the last Maruts were upgraded to the Mk51 standard.

In the end, no less than 1500 HF-24 /25/73 Marut were built in 5 variants. The type was exported to various non aligned contries including
Yugoslavia,
Egypt,
Zambia,
Sri Lanka,
Cuba,
Zimbabwe,
Indonesia,
South Africa,
Malaysia
Ghana

[Archibald]

Now that was a beautiful aircraft...

[upnorth]

Looked kind of like a Supermarine Swift on steroids.

[The Rat]

Always loved that aircraft. If somebody would kit one I would be all over it like a monkey on a hundred yards of grapevine.  

[elmayerle]

Ah, Rat, Alliance Models does/did do a resin kit and there was a vac-form from a Polish company.  All of these in 1/72.

[The Rat]

Thanks Evan, I will be on the lookout!

[elmayerle]

Thanks Evan, I will be on the lookout!

For reference, Hannants lists it as "sold out" but has it for reference:

http://www.hannants.co.uk/search/?FULL=ALL72015

I wish you luck in your hunt as it's got lines I love, too.

[Archibald]

This plane really had a huge whatif potential. I don't know if it is easy to modify a resin kit, but there's really plenties of things to whatif with this kit...  
The plane look good, but more interesting are the connections with foreign countries (from Egypt to Germany and GB). Well it's just what we like here on this forum...  

[ysi_maniac]

Inspired by arc3371's Marut II

HAL Marut II

[Dizzyfugu]

Reminds me of an 1:72 MiG-21F/1:100 F-105 kitbash I did some years ago! However, the intakes look a lot like a Hunter's, so I'd change the air intakes and add supersonic aerodynamic aids like shock cones or flow control intake ramps?