Tag Archives: Provost

Generations of Provost

RAF Cosford provided a perfect venue to have a demo from an old RAF Jet Provost T5. As the home of part of the RAF Museum collection, they have the original Jet Provost which is currently stored at Cosford outside the museum building. Looking at this airframe on its stalky undercarriage, you can see that not a lot was changed when adding the jet engine from the original Percival Provost. I saw one of these flying at Old Warden last year.

The later versions of the JP had a more optimised approach. The airframe was tweaked and the undercarriage was shorted considerably. With the need for prop clearance, there was no need for long undercarriage and, I imagine, it was probably really inconvenient for boarding and servicing. The JP3, JP4 and JP5 have their differences but they can clearly be seen to be of the same basic design. Having two of the three on one day was an interesting comparison.