Imagine running an air force whose newest bomber is faster than every fighter you own. That was the problem facing the Royal Air Force at the start of the 1930s, and the aircraft that caused it was a sleek silver biplane from Sydney Camm's drawing board: the Hawker Hart.

The Hart entered RAF service with No. 33 Squadron in February 1930. With a production top speed of around 184 mph, it could outrun the Bristol Bulldog and the Armstrong Whitworth Siskin, the fighters that were supposed to stop it. In air defence exercises, the defenders often simply could not catch it.

A Bomber Built Like a Racer

In 1926 the Air Ministry asked for a new two-seat day bomber that was fast, all-metal and capable of 160 mph. Hawker, Avro and de Havilland submitted designs, and Fairey joined after protesting. Camm's answer was a single-bay biplane with a steel-tube fuselage and a Rolls-Royce Kestrel V12 engine, closely cowled to keep the nose as slim as possible.

The prototype, J9052, first flew in June 1928 and reached 176 mph in level flight. In April 1929 it beat the Avro Antelope and the de Havilland Hound for the contract. The production Hart was even faster. When the prototype first flew, the fastest RAF fighter was the Gloster Gamecock, at about 153 mph.

Rex's Hangar tells the story of the Hawker Hart, the bomber that no RAF fighter could catch.

The Exercises the Fighters Lost

The embarrassing part came during the RAF's annual air defence exercises. According to Wikipedia, Siskins and Bulldogs often failed to intercept attacking Harts, and the Harts were sometimes told to limit their speed and height to give the fighters a chance. Historian John Rickard puts it even more bluntly about the 1931 exercises.

The RAF's solution was two-fold. In the short term, Hawker turned the Hart into a fighter: the Hart Fighter, later named the Demon, added a second forward gun and a supercharged Kestrel, and 305 were built. In the longer term, the RAF ordered a new single-seat interceptor from Camm, the Hawker Fury, which became the first RAF fighter to exceed 200 mph.

The Family That Followed

The Hart turned out to be one of the most adaptable airframes of the inter-war years. Hawker developed it into the Audax for army co-operation, the Hardy for Iraq, the Osprey floatplane for the Fleet Air Arm, the Hind and Hector, and a dual-control Hart Trainer, needed because the RAF's existing trainers could not prepare pilots for an aircraft this fast. Harts were built by Hawker, Armstrong Whitworth, Gloster and Vickers, and under licence in Sweden and South Africa.

Harts went to the Middle East during the Abyssinia crisis of 1935 and 1936 and served for years on the North-West Frontier of India. Four Swedish Harts flew as dive bombers with a volunteer squadron in Finland's Winter War of 1939 and 1940. The type was finally declared obsolete in 1943.

Where to See One

The Hart in the RAF Museum in London is G-ABMR, a Hart II that Hawker kept as a company aircraft and flew until 1971. It is painted as J9941, a serial it never actually carried in RAF service. A Hart Trainer, K4972, is also in the museum's collection. Standing next to either, it is hard to believe that this fabric-and-metal biplane once made an entire fighter force look slow.

Period film of Hawker Harts of No. 12 Squadron at Andover in 1931.

A large formation of RAF Hawker Harts at the Hendon air pageant in the early 1930s.

Sources: Wikipedia (Hawker Hart); Royal Air Force Museum; History of War (John Rickard); San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives.