The De Havilland Sea Venom

The Sea Venom was the first British carrier based jet. It’s development is based on the Vampire and Venom. The airplane was powered by a single Ghost 105 turbo jet engine with 5300 pounds of thrust. This two-seat, all weather fighter and bomber made it’s maiden flight on the 22nd of April 1954 ( service entry late 1954 ). It was armend by four 20 mm Hispano cannons and (optional) eight 60lb rockets or up to 2000lb of bomb load, resulting in a weight of 15800 pounds. It’s maximum speed was 575mph ( 926 km/h).The airplane was extensively used during the Suez conflict in the mid 50’s and played a mayor role at that time. It was also used by the Royal Australian Navy ( Sea Venom FAW 53 ) and was built under license by the French, known as the “ Aquilon”. The large wing area and the fantastic slow flying characteristics of this early jet airplane makes it an ideal subject for the scale modeller, especially for those who are new to turbine powered models.

The twin boom design is not the only difference to most common jets of that period. The Venom has plenty of interesting details such as the asymmetrical canopy, the “sting” at the end of the fuselage ( covering the arrestor hook) , the big nose radome and the permanently fixed wing tanks, just to name a few. That makes it stand out from the crowd.For the modeller, the short mainlegs/ big mainwheels , combined with the trailing noseleg are features that promise good ground handling characteristics. Although it was originally developed to be powered by smaller engines such as the MW54, Funsonic, Simjet 1200, Behotec J55, Ram or the new Artes “ Bee”, the large fuselage can take 66 size engines ( or even larger ones) aswell. The spacious fuselage provides plenty of space for all the needed components. Batteries , receiver and retract valves are housed under the detachable nosecone, tank and ECU fill the space between behind the cockpit . All components- beside the turbine- are completely hidden .At a scale of 1/6 , it is easy to create a detailed cockpit and the super detailed pilot figures from “ Dragon” fit perfectly into the cockpit. The Sea Venom kit includes detailed instructions and templates for a scale cockpit, including the Martin Baker ejection seats !

More about the components at “ The Kit”