Thunder & Lightnings

Hawker Sea Hawk - Survivor XE339 (Nose)

FGA.6 XE339 - Gloster Aviation Club, Gloucestershire

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Sea Hawk FGA.6 XE339 at Yeovilton, 11th June 1999; Mark Russell

XE339 was built as an FGA.4 by Armstrong-Whitworths at Coventry and entered service in 1955 with 800 NAS. In 1956 she was converted to an FGA.6 and went on to serve with 803 and 801 NAS before being loaned to the Fleet Requirements Unit in 1965.

She was retired in 1969 to ground instructional duties, passing through RNAY Fleetlands and the School of Technical Training at RAF Halton before ending up at the School of Aircraft Handling at Culdrose in 1974. On retirement from those duties she was placed in store at Lee-on-Solent from 1985 to 1995, when she was acquired by the RNHF as a spare source for their airworthy example and transported to RNAS Yeovilton. She is seen here in a storage compound there in 1999. Despite her disassembled state the aircraft actually looked to be in fairly decent condition and at time acted as a spares ship for the RNHF's airworthy example. In 2007 she was disposed of - unfortunately, the wings had been scrapped before the sale - and dismantled, with the nose section going to one owner and the fuselage to another (the plan at the time being to mate the fuselage with some wings and WV838's nose to create a complete example).

The centre and rear fuselage sections are now in storage at Hooton Park while Clive Davies/Gloster Aviation Club owns the nose in Gloucestershire. Unfortunatly the nose is not publicly viewable or accessible.

Information on this page current as of 31/08/2024, last updated by Jake

Find other photos of XE339 on the following sites:

Air-Britain - Airliners.net - Airplane-Pictures.net - flickr.com - WorldAirPics.com - JetPhotos.net - PlanePictures.net