The Folland Midge was a small,
swept-wing
A swept wing is a wing angled either backward or occasionally forward from its root rather than perpendicular to the fuselage.
Swept wings have been flown since the pioneer days of aviation. Wing sweep at high speeds was first investigated in Ge ...
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies.
* British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...
subsonic light
fighter aircraft
Fighter aircraft (early on also ''pursuit aircraft'') are military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat. In military conflict, the role of fighter aircraft is to establish air supremacy, air superiority of the battlespace. Domina ...
prototype originally developed as a concept demonstrator for the successful
Folland Gnat
The Folland Gnat is a British compact swept-wing subsonic aircraft, subsonic fighter aircraft that was developed and produced by Folland Aircraft. Envisioned as an affordable light fighter in contrast to the rising cost and size of typical comb ...
.
Design and development
The Midge and Gnat were the creation of
W.E.W. "Teddy" Petter, a British aircraft designer who had gained wide recognition for his design of the
English Electric Canberra
The English Electric Canberra is a British first-generation, jet-powered medium bomber. It was developed by English Electric during the mid- to late 1940s in response to a 1944 Air Ministry requirement for a successor to the wartime de Havilla ...
bomber and
Lightning
Lightning is a natural phenomenon consisting of electrostatic discharges occurring through the atmosphere between two electrically charged regions. One or both regions are within the atmosphere, with the second region sometimes occurring on ...
supersonic interceptor. Petter had grown suspicious of the trend towards bigger and more expensive combat aircraft, and he felt that a small, simple fighter would offer the advantages of low purchase and operational costs. New lightweight turbojet engines were being developed that would be able to power such small fighters.
[, Greg Goebel's Vectorsite.]
Petter was unable to pursue this vision at
English Electric
The English Electric Company Limited (EE) was a British industrial manufacturer formed after World War I by amalgamating five businesses which, during the war, made munitions, armaments and aeroplanes.
It initially specialised in industrial el ...
, so he left to become managing director and chief designer of
Folland Aircraft. In 1951, using company funds, he began work on his lightweight fighter concept, which was designated the
"Fo-141 Gnat". The Gnat was to be powered by a
Bristol BE.22 Saturn turbojet with thrust. However, the Saturn was cancelled, and so Petter's unarmed proof-of-concept demonstrator for the Gnat was powered by the less powerful
Armstrong Siddeley Viper
The Armstrong Siddeley Viper is a British turbojet engine developed and produced by Armstrong Siddeley and then by its successor companies Bristol Siddeley and Rolls-Royce Limited. It entered service in 1953 and remained in use with the Ro ...
101 with thrust. The demonstrator was designated Fo-139 "Midge". The Midge,
serial number
A serial number (SN) is a unique identifier used to ''uniquely'' identify an item, and is usually assigned incrementally or sequentially.
Despite being called serial "numbers", they do not need to be strictly numerical and may contain letters ...
''G-39-1'', first flew on 11 August 1954 from
Boscombe Down, Wiltshire, with
Teddy Tennant at the controls, and proved to be an excellent aircraft.
The Midge had a number of advanced features, such as hydraulically powered "flaperons", main landing gear that could be used as airbrakes, and a one-piece canopy that hinged over an inner armoured windscreen. Despite the low-powered engine, the little jet could break Mach 1 in a dive and was very agile.
The Midge was evaluated by pilots from Canada, India, Jordan, New Zealand, and the US Air Force, and was almost universally praised. The Midge had performed a total of 220 flights when it was destroyed in a fatal crash on 26 September 1955, with a Swiss pilot at the controls.
"The Midge Accident"
''Flight'' 7 October 1955 However, the Midge had demonstrated that Petter's lightweight fighter concept had much going for it. Folland went on to develop a full-scale Gnat prototype, also using company funds.Satellite in the Sky
''Satellite in the Sky'' is a 1956 British CinemaScope science fiction film in Warner Color, produced by Edward J. Danziger and Harry Lee Danziger, directed by Paul Dickson, and starring Kieron Moore (Irish actor), Kieron Moore, Lois Maxwell, Do ...
''. The Midge portrays a fictional jet fighter used to test an experimental rocket fuel.
Specifications
See also
Notes
References
Folland Midge
External links
{{British military aircraft since World War II
1950s British experimental aircraft
Midge
A midge is any small fly, including species in several family (biology), families of non-mosquito nematoceran Diptera. Midges are found (seasonally or otherwise) on practically every land area outside permanently arid deserts and the frigid ...
Single-engined jet aircraft
Aircraft first flown in 1954
Aircraft with retractable tricycle landing gear
Shoulder-wing aircraft