We have often knocked the Britain’s Cold War Javelin interceptor as a sluggish mess. For the sake of balance, we asked former Tornado pilot and author Michael Napier to defend Gloster’s ‘Flying Flat-iron’.

Firstly, the Javelin was the first RAF aircraft to be designed from the outset as a night/ all-weather interceptor; all previous night/ all-weather types had been less than ideal modifications of existing day fighters. The Javelin was designed to take-off on a dark and stormy night, intercept enemy aircraft many miles out over the North Sea and then return to an airfield right on the weather limits. To achieve this, it had to be stable enough to fly almost entirely on instruments: it was never intended (or required) to be an air superiority fighter, so comparisons of daytime air combat performance against, say, the Hunter completely miss the point. As an all-weather interceptor the Javelin, which equipped 10 squadrons in Fighter Command in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, was very effective in role. You wouldn’t want to be flying a Hunter over the North Sea on a dark and stormy night!

Javelin also boasted an iconic – and unique – design in the T-tailed delta. The delta wing was chosen because it combined the best control and stability characteristics at high subsonic speeds. The drawback was that delta wings need a high angle of attack at approach speeds, so the pilot would potentially come out of cloud at decision height and be unable to see the runway because the nose of the aircraft would be in the way. Hence the T-tail: by putting the elevators on top of the tailfin, the whole of the wing trailing edge was free for flaps which would, in turn, lower the nose angle. As a result, the Javelin came in an almost flat attitude during an approach – ideal for bad weather operations. The flying controls feel system introduced a nose down bias at high angles of attack so that the pilot did not stall and spin the aircraft, since, like most subsequent high performance aircraft, a spin was irrecoverable.

As a result of its stability, the Javelin was an excellent gun platform – interestingly two Javelin squadrons beat a Hunter squadron into third place in the Duncan Trophy gun/ciné-weave competition in Germany in 1961. So there, Hunter fans!

The Javelin was the first British front-line aircraft to be armed with guided Air-to-Air missiles (AAM) – the de Havilland Firestreak Infra-Red seeking missile in 1960. As such the Javelin was the pioneer of RAF AAM tactics. It could carry four Firestreaks – that’s four more than a Hunter and twice as many as a Lightning!

One drawback, which I’ll admit to – the Sapphire engines (oops!). Unfortunately, the Sapphire suffered from a condition known as Centreline Closure if they encountered super-cooling conditions – basically inside a thick cloud in the tropics. The engine outer casing shrunk rapidly as it cooled and squeezed the compressor blades so that they could no longer move. A number of aircraft were lost when the engines seized explosively in cloud. The simple remedy was to coat the compressor blades with ‘Rockide’ an abrasive substance that enabled the blades simply to rub themselves free if the engine casing contracted onto them! A simple fix.

Sometimes people also criticise the reheat system on the Sapphires, but that is not to understand how and why it was designed. The reheat was intended as a low-cost “fix” to restore the high-level performance of the aircraft with missiles (a draggy fit) to that of the original guns-only FAW7. Rather than designing a completely new fuel system to incorporate a reheat feed (which would have been excessively expensive), the reheat in the Javelin was designed around the excess high pressure fuel that was delivered to the engine core, but not needed at altitudes above 20,000ft. Rather than returning this fuel back to the tanks (which happened on pretty much all other aircraft types) in the Javelin FAW8 and 9 (as the reheated variants were designated) it could be delivered instead to the reheat, where the extra power was enough to overcome the drag of the missiles and restore the performance to guns-only days. It was not needed (and didn’t work!) at lower levels below 20,000ft.

The Javelin was the pioneer of Air-to-Air Refuelling (AAR) for RAF tactical aircraft. For, although the RAF had belatedly come to look at AAR seriously for the V-Force and carried out several high-profile long-range flights with Valiants, tactical aircraft were not included in AAR operations. This changed in 1960, when the Javelins of 23 Squadron began working with the Valiants of 214 Squadron. Eventually, two units, 23 and 64 Squadrons became AAR capable. Both operated the FAW9 and the AAR probe was attached specifically for AAR sorties. NOTE: some people erroneously think that an FAW9 with a probe was an FAW9R – not so! The FAW9R was fitted with wet pylons that could take under-wing fuel tanks… if you can see an under-wing fuel tank then it’s a FAW9R! Long-range deployments were trialled by 23 Squadron in 1960 when Exercise Dyke saw the deployment of four Javelins to Singapore and during Exercise Pounce the following year, 8 Javelins from 23 and 64 Squadrons deployed to Karachi. These two trials proved the possibility of deploying an entire squadron all the way to Singapore using AAR – something that happened when 64 Squadron moved there in 1964 in response to the Indonesian Confrontation.

Like us on Facebook here for exclusive material

Because of its flexibility and the ability to redeploy swiftly if needed, the Javelin became the RAF’s rapid reaction force. Javelins reinforced Germany during the Berlin Crisis in 1961 (in addition to the two squadrons already out there), Cyprus in 1963 and Zambia (during the Rhodesian UDI) in 1965… and, of course Singapore as already mentioned.

In short, the Javelin was the backbone of RAF Fighter command in the late 1950s and early 1960s and proved to be a flexible and effective interceptor. It was the pioneer of techniques and tactics for both AAMs and AAR in the RAF and the Lightning and Phantom benefitted hugely from the work carried out by the Javelin squadrons that preceded them. It was also the first aircraft to be called when crises erupted around the world and once again proved most capable wherever it was sent. So – the Javelin played a major, and very successful, part in the development of jet fighter aircraft in the RAF and ought to be remembered in that light.

Michael Napier is the author of the
Gloster Javelin: An Operational History

Pre-order The Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes Vol 3 here