The Beautiful Hawk

The BAE Systems Hawk is a British single-engine, jet-powered advanced trainer aircraft. It was first flown at Dunsfold, Surrey, in 1974 as the Hawker Siddeley Hawk, and subsequently produced by its successor companies, British Aerospace and BAE Systems, respectively. It has been used in a training capacity and as a low-cost combat aircraft.

Operators of the Hawk include the Royal Air Force (notably the Red Arrows display team) and a considerable number of foreign military operators. The Hawk is still in production in the UK and under licence in India by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) with over 900 Hawks sold to 18 operators around the world.

The attached images where taken by Hull born photographer Ken Jensen at the Mach Loop.  The Mach Loop is a set of valleys, situated between Dolgellau in the north, and Machynlleth in the south (and from which the Mach Loop gets its name), which are regularly used for low level flight training, with flying as low as 250 feet (76 metres) from the nearest terrain.  The aircraft photographed is a Hawk T1. The Hawk T1 (Trainer Mark 1) was the original version of the Hawk used by the RAF, with deliveries commencing in November 1976. The RAF took deliveries of a total of 175 T1s.

BAE Systems (Brough), our flagship tenant, still manufactures sub assemblies for the Hawk at the Humber Enterprise Park.  The latest variant is the Hawk Mk165.  This is an export variant of the Advanced Jet Trainer (AJT) which is currently on order by the Royal Saudi Air Force with a total order of 22 aircraft currently being built in the UK.

Posted by HEP Communications | 29 April 2015