Folland Gnat WHIF Ideas

[dy031101]

I found this thread fairly late (only seconds ago)......

Naval aircraft are a possibility.  The Indians looked at this, but found that Gnat was too light for the catapults on the Vikrant.  Even laden up, it was pushing it.  You'd have thought they could have added weight to the catapult system itself?

Interesting...... a jet too light for catapult...... so this one just couldn't be strengthened enough?

Could it have been catapulted from...... say, an escort carrier?

Pics from Hot Shots!, if you look closely in the second pic you'll see the Gnat's are a mix of T.1's & F.1's.

So the weapon pods are just repainted underwing fuel tanks...... but what if one does it like the French Mirage, having rocket launchers on the front end of the fuel tanks?  Or...... even multiple launchers for Stinger or Starstreak missiles? 

[frinklemur]

Yeah the Gnat flown by the Indian Air Force held up to Pakistan's F-86s very well, claimed seven F-86 kills for two Gnat losses in 1965.  The Gnat had better performance in the vertical, and is just so darn tiny!  I got to peer over, in and around a gutted Gnat F.1 fuselage in 99,  it felt more like a aluminum canoe than a jet fighter! 

[pyro-manic]

They had a yellow one at the Kemble airshow a few years ago (an ex-Red Arrows machine IIRC) - it was supposed to be flying a display with a couple of Hunters, but something had broken so it was static only. Tiny little thing.

[Mossie]

The Yellow Gnat is in the colours of the No.4 FTS Yellowjacks team, which were the immediate forerunners to the Red Arrows.  The story goes that when the RAF decided to rationalise the display teams, they chose No.4 FTS to form it.  However, a member of the senior brass hated the name yellowjacks & wasn't to keen on the colour yellow either, so had them painted red which forced a name change.  The 'Arrows' moniker was a nod to the RAF's most famous team, the Black Arrows.

A slight aside, if the brass had not been so against the Yellowjacks name, maybe we'd have seen them as the national team & Hawks in yellow too?  Maybe even a name change, but not the colour?  Would make a nice whiff.

EDIT, somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered someone had done Yellowjacks Hawks.  A quick search showed it was Martin, here's a link to a pic on his page, a Hunter too:
http://groups.msn.com/TheWhatifandoddballmodelpage/scalemodelworld2007.msnw?action=ShowPhoto&PhotoID=2206

[kitnut617]

Considering that the RAF never used the Gnat as a fighter/ground attack, this might be a good whiff, I picked this up a couple of weeks ago:

[Weaver]

Want to see how small a Gnat REALLY is? This is Bristol's Orpheus test-fleet:



Reputedly, one of the problems the Pakistani Sabre pilots had with the Gnat was that their gyro gunsights didn't have a wingspan setting small enough..... 

[MartG]

it felt more like a aluminum canoe than a jet fighter! 

I remember reading somewhere something said by a Gnat pilot - he reckoned you didn't get into a Gnat, you pulled it on like a pair of trousers 

[ysi_maniac]

-Gnat Mk.5-The Mk.4, but with two RB.153 engines due to slow progress on the Orpeus 6.  Perfromance expected to be M1.7+

Was RB.153 used by any real aircraft?

[Weaver]

Also, I believe the Gnat was a contender for NATO Basic Military Requirement 1 (NBMR-1) for a light weight tactical strike fighter (LWTSF).  What if it had won and been purchased in strength?  Gnats for countries such as:

•   France;

About as likely as Sunderland winning the Champion's League.  Given the period, had the Gnat won NMBR-1, the French would have taken a massive hissy fit and threw their toys out of the pram.  They would have ignored it and went with a French product.

As indeed they did with the unacceptably non-French winner, the G.91. The Etendard was probably the thing that came most directly from France's various entries.

The RAF didn't want the Gnat as it was too small.  They had problems with the trainers because of the differing shapes and sizes of the pilots.  Finally, it's designer, Petter, was a stubborn bugger who was always right and he constantly pissed off everyone he ever worked with.

Petter's stubborness ended up getting a lot of Indian pilots killed. When Boscombe Down told him that the Gnat's tailplane actuators could sometimes "fail dangerous" when the gear was down, he flatly refused to listen, and since (at the time) Britain wasn't buying the plane, there was little they could do to force the issue. A few years later and Indian Gnats were diving into the ground on finals shortly after putting their gear down - Boscombe Down was right. Gnat T.1s, Ajeets and surviving F.1s got modified actuators.

[Aircav]

Found this interesting gun pod in a old copy of Flight, 14 September 1961

[Mossie]

Very interesting Steve, cheers!

[Caveman]

Ah i see what has happened here. The Sabre and the G.91 are in 1:48, whilst the gnat is 1:72...

Is the gnat the only aircraft which you could use a 1:48 model with a 1:72 cockpit and pilot and it still look reasonable next to one of its fighter contemporaries?

[Mossie]

You're right, a quick calculation brings up a scalorama'd 1/48 Gnat trainer as having a 1/72 length of 13.11m & wingspan of 10.10m.  This compares pretty favourably with other early 2nd Gen jets (& still slightly smaller than some).  It'd be roughly similar in shape & dimensions to the F11F Tiger (L:14.3m W:9.6m).

If you can get hold of the Aeroclub 1/48 Gnat, & at a reasonable price (good luck with both!) it might be doable.  Hopefully Airfix will follow up their new 1/72 Gnat with a bigger one.

[Martin H]

Hopefully Airfix will follow up their new 1/72 Gnat with a bigger one.

PWEEEEZE!

A perfect impresion of the sound made by the WMD known as Narses when he lets go with the green mist.

[NARSES2]

Hopefully Airfix will follow up their new 1/72 Gnat with a bigger one.

PWEEEEZE!

A perfect impresion of the sound made by the WMD known as Narses when he lets go with the green mist.

And last nights curry was superb and fragrant