{"id":22291582,"date":"2026-09-14T15:22:34","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T13:22:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/hawker-siddeley-nimrod-maritime-patrol-comet-mra4\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T15:23:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T13:23:12","slug":"hawker-siddeley-nimrod-maritime-patrol-comet-mra4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/de\/hawker-siddeley-nimrod-maritime-patrol-comet-mra4\/","title":{"rendered":"Nimrod: The Airliner That Hunted Submarines for 42 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style>\r\n\r\n<p>The de Havilland Comet was the world\u2019s first jet airliner and, after three of them came apart in the air, the most notorious. Its reputation never recovered. But the last two unfinished Comet 4C fuselages on the Hawker Siddeley line did not go to scrap. They became the prototypes for an aircraft that hunted Soviet submarines in the North Atlantic for forty-two years.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The Nimrod was the world\u2019s first jet-powered maritime patrol aircraft, and for most of its life it was very good at a job almost nobody could see it doing. It ended badly, twice: once in a fireball over Afghanistan, and once in a scrapyard at Woodford with five brand-new aircraft being cut up behind screens.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f5f5f5;padding:20px 22px;margin:24px 0\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 10px;font-weight:700;font-size:17px;color:#1a1a1a\">Quick Facts<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0;font-size:15px;line-height:1.6\"><strong>Origin:<\/strong> Built on the de Havilland Comet 4C airframe. The two prototypes, XV148 and XV147, used the last two unfinished Comet fuselages<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0;font-size:15px;line-height:1.6\"><strong>First flight:<\/strong> 23 May 1967<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0;font-size:15px;line-height:1.6\"><strong>Into RAF service:<\/strong> 2 October 1969, first aircraft XV230<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0;font-size:15px;line-height:1.6\"><strong>Built:<\/strong> 49 production aircraft plus 2 prototypes<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0;font-size:15px;line-height:1.6\"><strong>Engines:<\/strong> Four Rolls-Royce Spey, 12,160 lbf each, replacing the Comet\u2019s Avons<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0;font-size:15px;line-height:1.6\"><strong>Crew:<\/strong> 13<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0;font-size:15px;line-height:1.6\"><strong>Endurance:<\/strong> About 10 hours, extended by shutting down up to two engines on patrol<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0;font-size:15px;line-height:1.6\"><strong>Weapons:<\/strong> 20,000 lb internal bay, up to 150 sonobuoys, torpedoes, depth charges, Harpoon<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0;font-size:15px;line-height:1.6\"><strong>MR2 withdrawn:<\/strong> 31 March 2010. The R1 flew last on 28 June 2011<\/p><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">A jet that could loiter<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>The requirement went out in June 1964 to replace the piston-engined Avro Shackleton, and the choice of a jet airframe was not obvious. Maritime patrol is mostly loitering, and jets are not good at loitering. The Nimrod\u2019s answer was brute capacity: the unpressurised pannier grafted under the Comet fuselage held the sensors and the weapons bay, and on station the crew simply shut down one or two of the four Speys and cruised on the rest, restarting them with crossfed compressor air when something happened.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>That gave roughly ten hours on task, a 44,000 ft ceiling when it needed to get somewhere quickly, and 500 knots when it needed to get there very quickly. A Shackleton could not do any of that. The crew of thirteen included two pilots, a flight engineer, two navigators, an air electronics officer and a back end of acoustic and electronic warfare operators.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/nimrod-mr2-xv231-naval-station-norfolk.jpg\" alt=\"An RAF Nimrod MR2 on the flight line at Naval Station Norfolk\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">Nimrod MR2 XV231 at Naval Air Station Norfolk, Virginia, in January 1984. The lower-fuselage pannier that turned a Comet airliner into a submarine hunter is clearly visible. US Navy photo by PH2 Wudjick.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>The primary job during the Cold War was finding Soviet submarines in the North Atlantic and, above all, making sure nobody else was finding Britain\u2019s own Resolution-class ballistic missile boats. From 1977 the fleet also patrolled the new 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone, roughly 270,000 square miles of water.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>It could carry nuclear depth bombs, which is the part most people have forgotten: two American-owned B57s until 1992, and two British WE.177A weapons of about ten kilotons. A converted airliner with a nuclear weapon in the bomb bay, orbiting over the Atlantic, is a fair summary of what the Cold War actually looked like.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/g-Arc8dwqXc\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>A documentary on the Nimrod in RAF service, covering the maritime patrol role it was built for.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The Falklands and the Gulf<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>The Falklands stretched it further than anyone intended. Nimrods deployed to Ascension Island on 5 April 1982 and flew 111 missions from there. On 15 May XV232 flew a patrol lasting 19 hours and 5 minutes. Five days later another aircraft covered 8,453 miles in a single sortie, the longest flight of the war. Sidewinders were bolted on for self-defence, which was never a standard fit and tells you something about how exposed those sorties were.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>In the 1991 Gulf War five MR2s operated from Seeb in Oman, using a towed radar decoy operationally for the first time, and were credited with helping sink or damage sixteen Iraqi vessels. Later the aircraft spent years doing something it was never designed for at all: long overland intelligence sorties above Afghanistan and Iraq, using maritime sensors to watch a land war.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">XV230<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>On 2 September 2006, XV230 \u2014 the very first Nimrod delivered to the RAF, thirty-seven years earlier \u2014 was flying over Helmand province when a fire warning sounded at 11:11. Six minutes later the aircraft exploded near Kandahar. All fourteen people aboard were killed: twelve RAF, one Royal Marine, one soldier. It remains the largest single loss of British service personnel since the Falklands.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The Board of Inquiry found that fuel had escaped during air-to-air refuelling and pooled in a dry bay, where it met a duct running at around 400\u00b0C. That duct was part of the same crossfeed system that let the crew restart shut-down engines. The design elements that combined to destroy the aircraft had been added across three separate decades: the crossfeed duct around 1969, a supplementary cooling pack around 1979, the permanent refuelling modification around 1989. None of them was dangerous alone.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Charles Haddon-Cave QC was asked to review it. His report, published on 28 October 2009 and subtitled <em>A Failure of Leadership, Culture and Priorities<\/em>, concluded that the Nimrod Safety Case produced between 2001 and 2005 had missed the very hazards that killed the aircraft, and that had it been done properly the loss would have been avoided. Forty per cent of hazards had been left open, thirty per cent unclassified, including the catastrophic fire hazard.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #d32f2f;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;It was riddled with errors. It missed the key dangers. Its production is a story of incompetence, complacency, and cynicism.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Charles Haddon-Cave QC<\/strong> &mdash; author of The Nimrod Review, 28 October 2009, on the Nimrod Safety Case<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>He traced the failure to a dilution of the airworthiness regime under financial pressure after the 1998 Strategic Defence Review, and called it a systemic breach of the Military Covenant. The Defence Secretary accepted it in the Commons the same day.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #1565c0;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;In the case of Nimrod XV230, we failed. We cannot undo this. Nothing will bring back those 14 men.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Bob Ainsworth MP<\/strong> &mdash; Secretary of State for Defence, statement to the House of Commons, 28 October 2009<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>BAE Systems issued a statement the following day accepting full responsibility for the failings and apologising unreservedly. An independent Military Aviation Authority was established in April 2010, which is the most durable thing to come out of the whole affair.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The replacement that was cut up<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>The MRA4 was supposed to be the answer. BAe was selected in July 1996 on a fixed-price contract for 21 aircraft at \u00a32,813 million, in service by April 2003. The plan was to reuse the existing fuselages with new wings, new engines and new systems.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/nimrod-mra4-in-flight.jpg\" alt=\"A Nimrod MRA4 in flight\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">The MRA4. Five were completed and none entered service. Photo: Ronnie Macdonald \/ Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>The problem was that the Comet fuselages had been hand-built in the 1950s and, as BAE\u2019s own design director later put it, had not been built to a common standard. Reusing them turned out to mean measuring and accommodating each one individually. The new wing then had to be redesigned, halting the programme. By the end only about ten per cent of a finished MRA4 was actually old airframe, which rather defeated the point.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Numbers fell from 21 to 18 to 12 to 9. The National Audit Office recorded an overrun of \u00a3789 million, a delay of 114 months, \u00a33.4 billion spent and a unit cost increase of 199 per cent. The Public Accounts Committee called it \u00a33.6 billion wasted. On 19 October 2010 the Strategic Defence and Security Review cancelled it outright, and from 26 January 2011 the completed aircraft were broken up at Woodford behind screens while the BBC filmed from a helicopter.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The counter-argument deserves an airing, because the scrapping is usually reported as vandalism. The aircraft were grounded at the point of cancellation and the Financial Times reported several hundred outstanding design non-compliances. These were not finished aeroplanes being destroyed out of spite. They were unfinished aeroplanes that had already consumed more than three billion pounds with no credible date for entering service.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/OOPX4W5vI2c\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>The MRA4 in the air at Fairford in 2007, four years before the survivors were cut up.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Britain then had no maritime patrol aircraft at all until the first Boeing P-8A Poseidon arrived, a gap of several years in which allied aircraft covered the northern approaches. The Nimrod\u2019s last flight of any kind was an R1 signals intelligence aircraft on 28 June 2011.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/BOR_5Om34vc\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Archive footage of the Nimrod in its element.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Forty-two years is a long run for an airframe that began as a cancelled airliner with a reputation for breaking up. The aeroplane was not the problem. What surrounded it, at the end, was.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><em>Sources: The Nimrod Review (HC 1025), Charles Haddon-Cave QC, 28 October 2009; National Audit Office Major Projects Reports 2010 and 2011; House of Commons Public Accounts Committee HC 687; Hansard; The Engineer; Financial Times.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<style>.mfq{margin:34px 0 8px}.mfq h2{font:26px\/1.3 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117;padding-top:22px;margin:0 0 6px}.mfq .qa details{border-top:1px solid #5C91FF;margin:0;padding:0}.mfq .qa details:last-of-type{border-bottom:1px solid #e2e7ee}.mfq .qa summary{cursor:pointer;list-style:none;display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center;gap:16px;padding:22px 26px;font:18px\/1.7 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117}.mfq .qa summary::-webkit-details-marker{display:none}.mfq .qa summary::after{content:\"+\";font:24px Helvetica,sans-serif;color:#3568e0;flex:0 0 auto}.mfq .qa details[open] summary::after{content:\"\\2013\"}.mfq .qa details:hover summary{color:#3568e0}.mfq .qa .a{font:16px\/1.7 \"Gilroy regular\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#454e5e;padding:0 26px 24px}.mfq .qa .a a{color:#3568e0}@media(max-width:680px){.mfq .qa summary{padding:18px 14px;font-size:17px}.mfq .qa .a{padding:0 14px 20px}}<\/style>\r\n\r\n\r\n<section class=\"mfq\"><h2>Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2><div class=\"qa\"><details open><summary>What was the Hawker Siddeley Nimrod?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The world\u2019s first jet-powered maritime patrol aircraft, built on the de Havilland Comet 4C airliner airframe. It first flew on 23 May 1967 and entered RAF service on 2 October 1969. Fifty-one were built including two prototypes, and the type served until 2011.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Why was the Nimrod based on the Comet?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The Comet production line was ending and the last two unfinished Comet 4C fuselages became the Nimrod prototypes. The jet airframe offered speed and altitude a piston-engined Shackleton could not match, and shutting down engines on patrol solved the loiter problem.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What happened to Nimrod XV230?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">On 2 September 2006 it caught fire and exploded over Helmand province in Afghanistan, killing all fourteen people aboard. Fuel escaping during air-to-air refuelling had pooled against a hot duct. It was the largest single loss of British service personnel since the Falklands.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What did the Haddon-Cave review find?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">That the Nimrod Safety Case produced between 2001 and 2005 had missed the hazards that destroyed the aircraft, and that a proper safety case would have prevented the loss. Charles Haddon-Cave described a failure of leadership, culture and priorities, and a systemic breach of the Military Covenant.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Why was the Nimrod MRA4 cancelled?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Cost and delay. The hand-built Comet fuselages had never been made to a common standard, the new wing required redesign, and the National Audit Office recorded a \u00a3789 million overrun, 114 months late and \u00a33.4 billion spent. The 2010 SDSR cancelled it and the airframes were scrapped in 2011.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What replaced the Nimrod?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Eventually the Boeing P-8A Poseidon, but not immediately. Between the MR2\u2019s withdrawal in March 2010 and the Poseidon entering RAF service, Britain had no maritime patrol aircraft of its own and relied on allied cover for the northern approaches.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Can I fly in a military jet?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Not a Nimrod, but MiGFlug flies civilians in genuine military aircraft including the L-39 Albatros and the MiG-29 Fulcrum, with professional crews from approved airfields. Details and pricing are at <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/flights-prices\/\">migflug.com\/flights-prices<\/a>.<\/div><\/details><\/div><\/section>\r\n\r\n\r\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@type\":\"FAQPage\",\"mainEntity\":[{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What was the Hawker Siddeley Nimrod?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"The world\u2019s first jet-powered maritime patrol aircraft, built on the de Havilland Comet 4C airliner airframe. It first flew on 23 May 1967 and entered RAF service on 2 October 1969. Fifty-one were built including two prototypes, and the type served until 2011.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Why was the Nimrod based on the Comet?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"The Comet production line was ending and the last two unfinished Comet 4C fuselages became the Nimrod prototypes. 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Between the MR2\u2019s withdrawal in March 2010 and the Poseidon entering RAF service, Britain had no maritime patrol aircraft of its own and relied on allied cover for the northern approaches.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Can I fly in a military jet?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Not a Nimrod, but MiGFlug flies civilians in genuine military aircraft including the L-39 Albatros and the MiG-29 Fulcrum, with professional crews from approved airfields. Details and pricing are at migflug.com\/flights-prices.\"}}]}<\/script><div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Related Posts<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/nimrod-aew3-british-radar-failure-1986-cancellation\/\">The Billion-Pound Radar That Never Worked<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/de-havilland-comet-metal-fatigue-square-windows-investigation-1954\/\">The de Havilland Comet: The Beautiful Jet That Taught Us How Aircraft Break<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/breguet-atlantic-atlantique-2-maritime-patrol-secbat-history\/\">Breguet Atlantic: Europe\u2019s Purpose-Built Submarine Hunter<\/a><\/p><\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Built from the last two unfinished Comet fuselages, the Nimrod was the world\u2019s first jet maritime patrol aircraft. It ended in a fireball over Helmand and a scrapyard at Woodford.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":22291114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[666,664],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22291582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history-and-legends","category-military-aviation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Nimrod: The Airliner That Hunted Submarines | MiGFlug<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Built from the last unfinished Comet fuselages, the Nimrod was the first jet maritime patrol aircraft. 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