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Westland Pteradon

The Westland Pteradon is a post-war twin engined jet reconaissance aircraft operated by the Royal Air Force and the Royal New Zealand Air Force.

History[]

After the end of WWII the various allies walked away with enormous amounts of Nazi technology. The Westland Company found itself in possession of blueprints to various Horten aircraft, a German manufacturer interested in flying wings. However the then UK government was more interested in saving money than cutting edge military designs and the whole project slowly limped along until the early 1950s when a much need boost was given to all UK design teams.

Revival[]

Westland used this boost to revive the long overlooked Horten blueprints to make an offer to the RAF for a flying-wing type craft. Thus was born the Westland Albatross, a recon and fighter design, looking much like a Horten but with added stabilisers to please a conservative RAF. By the time the design had entered service in 1958 the New Commonwealth was the Major customer for the aircraft with the RAF, RSAAF and RNZAF all taking the design though by this time someone at Westland had remembered the old Pterodactyl design and renamed the "bird" accordingly. The craft served mainly with oversea bases and was in service with the RNZAF until 1979, though it was only in RAF service until 1964. The craft is portrayed as a 231Sqn machine based at RAF Akrotiri in 1962.

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