Profiles and Logos
The Hawker Siddeley HS121 Trident was the worlds first T tail rear mounted 3 engined aircraft, it was also the first to perform a blind landing. In July 1956 BEA announced the requirement for a short haul second generation jet airliner. Four companies produced projects, the leading one being the de Havilland DH121 which was a three engined aircraft. During the late 1950’s de Havilland, Hunting and Fairey joined forces to build and market the DH121, the company was named Airco. In 1960 de Havilland was bought by the Hawker Siddeley group and the DH121 became the HS121 Trident. The Trident had advanced avionics which gave the Trident its most unusual design feature, the offset nosewheel to accommodate the large avionics bay.
The Trident was in the foreground of the development of blind landing technology, one of the advantages of having three engines was the triple redundancy of the hydraulic and electrical systems. The first flight of a Trident was G-ARPA which made its maiden flight on 9th January 1962 and entered service with BEA on 1st April 1964. There were five variants of the Trident, the original 1C, the 1E which had increased seating, uprated engines and leading edge slats. The 2E was as the 1E with triplex autoland systems. The 3B was a high capacity version of the 2E with a 5m (16ft 5in) stretch and RB162 booster in the tail. The Super Trident 3B had an extended range of 692km (430 miles). 117 Tridents were built.