Another New Arrival at the RAF Museum
PERCIVAL PRENTICE T.1 VS618 /G-AOLKOne of 349 production standard Percival P.40 Prentice Tiger Moth replacement two-seat basic trainer aircraft built for RAF service as the RAF’s first side-by-side trainer. Built under sub-contract at the Blackburn Aircraft factory at Brough, serials block VS609 – VS758. Contract No 623. Constructor’s number PAC/225. A total of 483 Prentices were built including some for Argentina and India.
13 May 49 Awaiting Collection.
18 May 49 To No 22 Flying Training School (FTS), RAF Syerston, Notts. Used to train Royal Navy personnel as pilots.
9 Mar 54 To No 9 Maintenance Unit, RAF Cosford, Salop for storage.
25 Apr 56 Transferred to civil register as G-AOLK.
11 May 56 Sold to Freddie Laker’s Aviation Traders Ltd at Southend, Essex. Aviation Traders purchased from the Ministry of Supply an eventual 252 of the RAF’s Prentices for civil conversion, making them nominally the 8th or 9th largest air force in the world at the time, with the aircraft ferried from RAF Maintenance Units at Cosford, High Ercall and Shawbury, all in Shropshire, to Southend as ‘Operation Prentice’ with RAF markings painted out and civil registrations crudely painted over them. Between April and July 1956, 33 pilots ferried 92 Prentices to Southend and another 58 to Stansted.
Only 28 of these Prentices reached civil certification, with barely 20 actually being sold, being fuel-guzzlingly expensive to operate and outsold by imported American types, the rest being dumped and scrapped at Southend and Stansted in the early 1960s. Those Laker did sell were generally painted silver-grey, upholstered in grey vinyl with red trimmings, with a bench seat for three behind the pair of pilot’s seats, initially selling at £2000 (later £1500) including a four-channel radio.
1958/1960 Registered to Aviation Traders (Engineering) and held in long-term storage awaiting conversion for the private/executive/charter role.
7 May 64 Offered for sale in Flight International magazine with six seats and long -range fuel tanks for ‘£1,760 or offer’.
1967/8 Registered to Mr A.H. Smith.
1974-2008 Registered to Hilton Aviation Ltd, Southend, Essex; flown in a variety of purely civil colour schemes over the years. Still airworthy 2009.
Jul 2009 Flown from temporary storage at North Weald, Essex, to Shuttleworth Collection’s airfield at Old Warden, Beds.
Flown at White Waltham airfield 4 October 2009.
9 Oct 2009 Following purchase by RAF Museum, flown by Ben Cox from Coventry to RAFM Cosford for restoration and display.
One of some 17 Prentice survivors worldwide.