The Vampire – a jet of the WWII era that led the first London Victory flypast
WHILE many people remember the Gloster Meteor as the only British-made World War Two jet, there was a second that took to the air before hostilities ended in 1945 – the less well-known De Havilland Vampire.
The aircraft is probably best remembered for its ‘unique’ tail unit and the fact that its naval version, the Sea Vampire, was the first to take off and land on an aircraft carrier; while it was flying long before the end of WWII, its service life didn’t begin until 1946, coming to the public’s attention when Fighter Command’s 247 Squadron took to the capital’s skies in the new jet during the London Victory flypast in June of that year.
It was, however, very much a Second World War creation, the prototype flown at De Havilland’s Hatfield airfield in September 1943, more than two years after the company had been approached to design an aircraft that would make use of the ‘new’ jet propulsion technology.
Anyone who saw the new aircraft would have been astonished by its ‘futuristic’ design: like its successor aircraft the Venom, the Vampire’s construction was aimed at improving jet engine efficiency with the rear of the fuselage replaced by two longitudinal auxiliary booms – the idea to increase stability by helping distribute forces and reduce vibrational problems. While the name Vampire is deemed to have been attributed to the aircraft to invoke the image of a deadly creation, it is more likely that it came from the fact that without the tail section, the design simply looked like a bat.
The relatively low power of early jet engines made twin-engine aircraft the logical approach, but the efficiency of the Frank Halford design and the mixed wood and metal construction of DH’s design made a single-engine fighter perfectly plausible.
Originally coming under the codename Spider Crab, the protype LZ548/G was flown on September 20, 1943, by Geoffrey R de Havilland, company chief pilot, and son of the firm’s founder – six months after the Meteor had performed its maiden flight.
It would be a further eight months before the initial order for 120 Vampire MkIs was made, the first production aircraft built more than 200 miles from the DH factory in Hertfordshire, the commitment to Mosquito production at Hatfield seeing many of the Vampires constructed at the English Electric Company facility near Preston.
The first production version of the Vampire was flown on April 20, 1945 from the airfield at Salmesbury in Lancashire, with the end of WWII seeing the importance and speed of its arrival into service reducing; the most significant event for the Vampire in 1945 came off the coast of the Isle of Wight on December 3, the sea version performing the first take-off and landing of a jet from an aircraft carrier, HMS Ocean – at the controls for this historic event was Captain Eric Winkle Brown.
But it was its fighter capabilities that concerned the RAF, finally taking delivery of a jet capable of flying at around 500mph with a range over 1,000 miles when the first Vampire Mk I fighters arrived in service in April 1946, with 247 Squadron among the first to operate the new aircraft in the interceptor role. While the Gloster Meteor took over that interceptor role, the Vampire was allocated ground attack work, many used to equip squadrons that formed part of the Second Tactical Air Force based in Germany, replacing Hawker Typhoons and Tempests.
Its speed and versatility led to the Vampire achieving a number of firsts, feats that were not uncommon in aircraft during the beginning of the jet-engine era: in March 1948 a modified version powered by the Ghost engine set a new altitude record reaching a height of almost 60,000ft (18,119 metres), while four months later six Vampire F3s from No. 54 Squadron became the first jets to fly across the Atlantic, refuelling at Stornoway, Keflavik in Iceland, and Bluie West 1 in Greenland before arriving at Goose Bay airfield in Newfoundland.
While the Atlantic crossing was officially recorded at eight hours and 18 minutes in flight-time, it had taken the aircraft more than two weeks, forced to stop at Stornoway for 11 days due to headwinds in excess of 150mph, and in Iceland for two days due to dense fog.
Record-breaking apart, at its peak there were 19 squadrons equipped with Vampires in Europe, the Middle East and the Far East, the jet seeing service in a number of conflicts, notably during the Malayan Emergency in the late 1940s/early 1950s when insurgent targets were hit by aircraft carrying rockets and bombs in remote jungle areas of Malaysia.
(An RAF Vampire of No. 25 Squadron in 1954)
Variants continued in service into the mid-1950s, but while its use as a ground attack aircraft diminished, it continued in a training role until the mid-1960s, with over 600 T.11s produced at Hatfield and Chester, and also by Fairey Aviation at Ringway (now Manchester Airport).
Its training role was superseded by the Folland Gnat, but a number were kept in service until the early 1970s, a working life of more than a quarter of a century in the RAF being testament to the quality of the de Havilland design.
The jet also proved popular in the overseas market, with Canada, France, and Egypt among a number of countries purchasing the aircraft. During the Suez crisis in 1956, Egypt used their Vampires to attack Israeli ground forces
More than 3,200 Vampires were built in the UK between 1945 and 1960, with around a further 600 under licence by six countries, the aircraft operating in the service of 26 nations. Still held in high regard by enthusiasts across the world, more than dozen of the aircraft are believed to be still in airworthy condition; several have been modified for air racing, notably taking part in the Reno Air Races in Nevada in the US.
