The Tempest has flown (update)

Anglia Aircraft Restorations at Sywell aerodrome did it! For the first time in more than fifty years, a Hawker Tempest they restored took to the sky on 10 October 2023. And our correspondent at Sywell, Nigel Harrison shared his excellent of this event with us!

The fighter is a Tempest II that flew in the RAF as MW763 and was later sold to the Indian Air Force where its served as HA586. The unique machine (c/n 420) is registered as G-TEMT. It is marked as RAF PR533, with code ‘5R-V’, as flown by 33 Squadron in Malaya in the 1950s.

On its first post restoration flight G-TEMT was flown by Peter Kinsey. It was accompanied by well-known P-51 Mustang 'Miss Velma'.

Scramble posted earlier on the roll-out of G-TEMT on 25 May 2021.

We then expressed our hopes that it would fly in July of that year, but it took another two years to see it actually happen!

Photos by Nigel Harrison