Aviation Historian 8
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??? - David Lockspeiser: 1927-2014
A typically dynamic photograph by Russell Adams of Hunter F.4 WV325 completing an elegant loop before its delivery to the Central Flying School in 1955. David’s nephew Simon Sanders recalls his uncle ’s thrilling aerobatic displays over his boarding school in Sussex while production testing Hunters from the Hawker airfield at Dunsfold.
One of David’s own photographs taken during the 1957 Hunter sales tour to Switzerland, in which he used Hunter F.6 XE588 to demonstrate the type’s impressive ground-attack capabilities.
In the summer of 1957 two RAF Hunter F.6s, XE587 and XE588, were sent to Switzerland to participate in comparative evaluation trials for a new Swiss Air Force fighter. One of the two, seen here with a suitably Alpine backdrop at Ambri, is fitted with outer wing racks carrying Hispano 8cm unguided rocket projectiles for the trials.
The many faces of David Lockspeiser MRAeS CEng, one of Britain’s most highly-respected test pilots and engineers. Climbing out of the cockpit of Hunter F.6 XE588 after a 1957 demonstration flight in Switzerland;
This Hawker portrait from 1960 shows David in his element; in the cockpit of a Hunter, ready to wring the last drop of performance from the elegant fighter.
The many faces of David Lockspeiser MRAeS CEng, one of Britain’s most highly-respected test pilots and engineers. Flying Hawker Siddeley’s Dragon Rapide G-AHGC in September 1955;
The 1/10ths-scale flying proof-of-concept LDA 01 at the Paris Air Show in 1975. Note how the aircraft is painted in camouflage on the port side and in civil colours on the starboard side.
With a revised mainwheel arrangement and back in overall civil colours, the LDA 01, registered G-AVOR, is demonstrated by its designer in the summer of 1976. The following year David moved to Singapore to work on upgrades to the nation’s Hunters, but he resumed work on the LDA on his return to the UK in the mid-1980s.
The many faces of David Lockspeiser MRAeS CEng, one of Britain’s most highly-respected test pilots and engineers. At the controls of his own LDA design;
David with a scale model of the ingenious but ill-starred Land Development Aircraft (LDA) he developed at Dunsfold with George Smith.