{"id":21139763,"date":"2026-09-08T16:42:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T14:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/hawker-p-1121-mach-2-5-fighter-never-flown\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T16:44:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T14:44:13","slug":"hawker-p-1121-mach-2-5-fighter-never-flown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/fr\/hawker-p-1121-mach-2-5-fighter-never-flown\/","title":{"rendered":"Hawker Built a Mach 2.5 Fighter, Then Refused to Fly It"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style>\r\n\r\n<p>By the summer of 1958 the experimental shop at Hawker&rsquo;s Kingston works held something very close to a complete aeroplane. The wing was built. The fuselage frames were joined. The undercarriage had been tested, the systems rigged, the wind-tunnel programme all but finished. What the Hawker P.1121 did not have was a customer, a funded engine, or a government that still believed manned fighters had a future.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>It was designed around a single enormous turbojet and a projected speed of roughly Mach 2.5 &mdash; broadly the class of the McDonnell <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/aircraft\/f-4-phantom-ii\/\">F-4 Phantom II<\/a> that would reach US Navy squadrons a few years later. It was Sir Sydney Camm&rsquo;s answer to the question of what came after the <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/aircraft\/hawker-hunter\/\">Hunter<\/a>. It never flew. It was never finished. And the reason had almost nothing to do with engineering.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f5f5f5;padding:20px 24px;margin:24px 0;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 10px;font-weight:700;font-size:17px;color:#0d1117\">Quick Facts<\/p><table style=\"width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;font-size:15px;line-height:1.6\"><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 14px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Aircraft<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">Hawker P.1121<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 14px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Origin<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">Hawker Aircraft, Kingston-upon-Thames, United Kingdom<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 14px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Design team<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">Sir Sydney Camm and the Hawker project office<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 14px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Powerplant<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">One de Havilland Gyron turbojet<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 14px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Design speed<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">Around Mach 2.5<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 14px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Status<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">Private venture &mdash; never completed, never flown<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 14px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Killed by<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">The 1957 Defence White Paper, then the OR.339 award of January 1959<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 14px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Survivors<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">Forward fuselage sections, Brooklands Museum, Surrey<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/div>\r\n<h2>A fighter nobody had ordered<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>The P.1121 was not a government programme. There was no Air Ministry specification behind it, no development contract, no committee. Hawker paid for it out of its own money, on the calculation that a company with the <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/aircraft\/hawker-hunter\/\">Hunter<\/a> in mass production could afford to build the next thing speculatively and sell it afterwards &mdash; to the RAF, to NATO air forces, to anyone who wanted a Mach 2 strike fighter in the early 1960s.<\/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\/hawker-hunter-f6a-raf-museum-cosford.jpg\" alt=\"Hawker Hunter F6A preserved at the RAF Museum Cosford\" 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\">A Hawker Hunter F6A at RAF Museum Cosford. The Hunter was paying Hawker&rsquo;s bills when the P.1121 was drawn &mdash; and it was the aircraft the P.1121 was meant to succeed. Photo: Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n<p>That calculation had worked before. It was the logic that produced the Hurricane and, later, the Hunter itself. What Camm&rsquo;s team could not price in was a Minister of Defence who had decided that the whole category was obsolete.<\/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\/Af9rrlXI3xg\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n<h2>One very large engine<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>Where most of its contemporaries used two engines, the P.1121 used one: the de Havilland Gyron, the most powerful British turbojet then under development. A single Gyron in a large airframe promised Mach 2.5 with a useful weapons load and the fuel to go somewhere with it &mdash; a strike fighter rather than the short-legged point interceptors the RAF had been buying.<\/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\/de-havilland-gyron-turbojet-engine.jpg\" alt=\"De Havilland Gyron turbojet engine on museum display\" 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\">A de Havilland Gyron. One of these, buried in a large fuselage and fed by a ventral intake, was to give the P.1121 its Mach 2.5. Photo: Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n<p>The single-engine choice is also what made the aircraft fragile as a business proposition. Tie an airframe to one engine and you have tied its fate to that engine&rsquo;s funding. When Gyron development was terminated, there was no second option to fall back on.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2>The White Paper that ate British aviation<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>In March 1957 the Minister of Defence, Duncan Sandys, published <em>Defence: Outline of Future Policy<\/em> &mdash; Command Paper 124, remembered ever since simply as the 1957 Defence White Paper. Its central judgement was that the coming generation of ballistic missiles made manned interceptors, and the radar and gun networks built to support them, largely pointless. Deterrence, not defence, would keep Britain safe.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The consequences arrived fast. The F.155 interceptor requirement was killed. So were the Saunders-Roe SR.53 and SR.177, the Avro 730 supersonic reconnaissance bomber, and the Blue Envoy surface-to-air missile. Only the English Electric P.1 &mdash; which became the <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/aircraft\/english-electric-lightning\/\">Lightning<\/a> &mdash; was reprieved, and only after the RAF pointed out that new Soviet supersonic bombers would arrive before the Bloodhound missile was fully deployed. The paper also instructed the aircraft industry to consolidate, and made clear that new contracts would go to the merged firms.<\/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\/Yy5OmwZa_84\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n<h2>January 1959: the day it died<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>Hawker kept going anyway. By mid-1958 the major assemblies were complete and most of the wind-tunnel and systems work was done. Then the board did the arithmetic. Financing a first flight, and the flight-test programme behind it, with no customer and no engine contract was a bill the company would not sign. The decision was deferred, pending the outcome of Operational Requirement OR.339 &mdash; the RAF&rsquo;s new tactical strike and reconnaissance aircraft.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>In January 1959 OR.339 went to the Vickers and English Electric partnership. That aircraft became the <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/the-tsr-2-the-best-british-aircraft-that-never-served\/\">TSR-2<\/a>, and it took the last of the money with it. Gyron development was terminated. The P.1121 stopped where it stood.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/sir-sydney-camm-hawker-chief-designer-1.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"flex-shrink:0\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/sir-sydney-camm-hawker-chief-designer-1.jpg\" alt=\"Sir Sydney Camm\" style=\"width:96px;height:96px;border-radius:50%;object-fit:cover;object-position:center;display:block;border:2px solid #ddd\"><\/a><div><em>&ldquo;All aircraft have four dimensions: span, length, height and politics. TSR-2 simply got the first three right.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Sir Sydney Camm<\/strong> &mdash; Chief designer, Hawker Aircraft &mdash; speaking on the TSR-2 cancellation shortly before his death in March 1966<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n<p>Camm was talking about somebody else&rsquo;s aeroplane. He had already watched his own die the same way.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2>What Camm did next<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>The interesting part of the story is what the failure freed him to do. With the conventional supersonic fighter route closed off by policy, Camm&rsquo;s office turned to a much stranger idea: vertical take-off using a single vectored-thrust engine. That became the <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/aircraft\/hawker-p1127-kestrel\/\">P.1127<\/a>, then the Kestrel, then the <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/aircraft\/harrier-jump-jet\/\">Harrier<\/a> &mdash; the one British combat aircraft of that era that nobody else could copy, and the one that sold to the United States Marine Corps.<\/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\/tqm0U_qCyeU\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n<h2>What survives<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>Because the aircraft was never completed, there is no P.1121 in a museum hall to walk around. There are, however, real pieces of it. Sections of the forward fuselage survived in storage for decades, latterly in the RAF Museum&rsquo;s reserve collection at Cosford, and in 2025 they were transferred to Brooklands Museum in Surrey &mdash; a few miles from the Kingston works where they were built.<\/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\"><em>&ldquo;&hellip; a constant reminder of how sovereign capability is so easily damaged by politics.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Howard Wheeldon, FRAeS<\/strong> &mdash; Aerospace analyst, writing on the fiftieth anniversary of the TSR-2 cancellation, 2015<\/div><\/div>\r\n<p>The P.1121 is usually filed under &ldquo;British aviation&rsquo;s wasted decade&rdquo;, alongside the <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/martin-baker-mb5-best-british-fighter-never-built\/\">Martin-Baker MB5<\/a> and the TSR-2. The more precise reading is narrower and more uncomfortable: this was a company betting its own money on a product line the customer had publicly announced it no longer wanted.<\/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 P.1121?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The Hawker P.1121 was a British supersonic strike fighter designed by Sir Sydney Camm&rsquo;s team at Hawker Aircraft in Kingston-upon-Thames during the mid-1950s. It was intended to reach around Mach 2.5 on a single de Havilland Gyron turbojet, putting it broadly in the class of the McDonnell <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/aircraft\/f-4-phantom-ii\/\">F-4 Phantom II<\/a>. It was built as a private venture and was never completed.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Did the Hawker P.1121 ever fly?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">No. The Hawker P.1121 never flew and was never finished. By the summer of 1958 the major assemblies were complete and most of the wind-tunnel and systems work was done, but the Hawker board declined to fund a first flight without a customer or an engine contract.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>How fast would the Hawker P.1121 have been?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The Hawker P.1121 was designed for roughly Mach 2.5. Because it was never completed or flown, that figure is a design projection rather than a measured performance, and it was never validated in the air.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What engine did the Hawker P.1121 use?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The Hawker P.1121 was designed around a single de Havilland Gyron, the most powerful British turbojet under development at the time. Tying the airframe to one engine meant that when Gyron development was terminated there was no fallback powerplant.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Why was the Hawker P.1121 cancelled?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Two decisions killed it. The 1957 Defence White Paper, published by Minister of Defence Duncan Sandys, concluded that ballistic missiles were making manned interceptors obsolete and cancelled most of Britain&rsquo;s advanced fighter work. Then, in January 1959, Operational Requirement OR.339 was awarded to the Vickers and English Electric partnership &mdash; the project that became the <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/the-tsr-2-the-best-british-aircraft-that-never-served\/\">TSR-2<\/a> &mdash; leaving the P.1121 with no route to a customer.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Was the Hawker P.1121 a government project?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">No, and this is the most common misunderstanding about it. There was no Air Ministry specification and no development contract behind the P.1121. Hawker financed it privately, expecting to sell the aircraft to the RAF and export customers after it flew.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Does anything of the Hawker P.1121 survive?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Yes. Sections of the forward fuselage survived in long-term storage, latterly in the RAF Museum&rsquo;s reserve collection at Cosford, and in 2025 they were transferred to Brooklands Museum in Surrey, close to the Kingston works where the aircraft was built.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What did Sydney Camm design after the Hawker P.1121?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">With the conventional supersonic fighter route closed by government policy, Camm&rsquo;s office turned to vectored-thrust vertical take-off. That work produced the <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/aircraft\/hawker-p1127-kestrel\/\">Hawker P.1127<\/a>, then the Kestrel, and ultimately the <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/aircraft\/harrier-jump-jet\/\">Harrier<\/a>.<\/div><\/details><\/div><\/section>\r\n\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 P.1121?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"The Hawker P.1121 was a British supersonic strike fighter designed by Sir Sydney Camm\u2019s team at Hawker Aircraft in Kingston-upon-Thames during the mid-1950s. It was intended to reach around Mach 2.5 on a single de Havilland Gyron turbojet, putting it broadly in the class of the McDonnell F-4 Phantom II. It was built as a private venture and was never completed.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Did the Hawker P.1121 ever fly?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"No. The Hawker P.1121 never flew and was never finished. By the summer of 1958 the major assemblies were complete and most of the wind-tunnel and systems work was done, but the Hawker board declined to fund a first flight without a customer or an engine contract.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"How fast would the Hawker P.1121 have been?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"The Hawker P.1121 was designed for roughly Mach 2.5. Because it was never completed or flown, that figure is a design projection rather than a measured performance, and it was never validated in the air.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What engine did the Hawker P.1121 use?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"The Hawker P.1121 was designed around a single de Havilland Gyron, the most powerful British turbojet under development at the time. Tying the airframe to one engine meant that when Gyron development was terminated there was no fallback powerplant.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Why was the Hawker P.1121 cancelled?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Two decisions killed it. The 1957 Defence White Paper, published by Minister of Defence Duncan Sandys, concluded that ballistic missiles were making manned interceptors obsolete and cancelled most of Britain\u2019s advanced fighter work. Then, in January 1959, Operational Requirement OR.339 was awarded to the Vickers and English Electric partnership \u2014 the project that became the TSR-2 \u2014 leaving the P.1121 with no route to a customer.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Was the Hawker P.1121 a government project?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"No, and this is the most common misunderstanding about it. There was no Air Ministry specification and no development contract behind the P.1121. Hawker financed it privately, expecting to sell the aircraft to the RAF and export customers after it flew.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Does anything of the Hawker P.1121 survive?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Yes. Sections of the forward fuselage survived in long-term storage, latterly in the RAF Museum\u2019s reserve collection at Cosford, and in 2025 they were transferred to Brooklands Museum in Surrey, close to the Kingston works where the aircraft was built.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What did Sydney Camm design after the Hawker P.1121?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"With the conventional supersonic fighter route closed by government policy, Camm\u2019s office turned to vectored-thrust vertical take-off. That work produced the Hawker P.1127, then the Kestrel, and ultimately the Harrier.\"}}]}<\/script><p><em>Sources: Wikipedia (Hawker P.1121; 1957 Defence White Paper); Key.Aero, &ldquo;Hawker P.1121 breaks cover at Brooklands&rdquo;; Howard Wheeldon FRAeS, &ldquo;Of Sydney Camm, TSR-2 and Politics&rdquo;, BATTLESPACE, 3 June 2015.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<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\/the-tsr-2-the-best-british-aircraft-that-never-served\/\">The TSR-2: The Best British Aircraft That Never Served<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/hawker-p1127-harrier-awkward-ancestor\/\">Hawker P.1127: The Harrier&rsquo;s Awkward Ancestor<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/hawker-hunter-most-beautiful-jet\/\">The Hawker Hunter: Britain&rsquo;s Most Beautiful Jet<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/martin-baker-mb5-best-british-fighter-never-built\/\">The Best British Fighter Never Built<\/a><\/p><\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Hawker P.1121 was largely built by the summer of 1958. It never flew, and the reason had almost nothing to do with engineering.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":21136233,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[666,664],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21139763","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>Hawker P.1121: The Mach 2.5 Fighter That Never Flew<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Hawker built the P.1121 with its own money and never flew it. 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