The Hawker Hart designed by Sydney Camm was the finest RAF light bomber of the interwar period. Upon entering service it had a performance which made contemporary RAF fighters seem pedestrian by comparison. This performance was made possible by the best engine of its day the Rolls Royce Kestrel.

Camm submitted his design for a light bomber in 1926 and the first prototype was flown Brooklands in 1928. The Hart was found to provide outstanding performance with beautifully harmonised controls which made it immediately popular with it"s pilots and during tests at Martelsham Heath the Hart was dived to a maximum speed of 328 mph. During the early 1930"s the Hawker Hart was the mainstay of the RAF light bombing force and many were built as dual control trainers, soldiering on in that role well into world war two.

So sucessful was the basic design that it spawned an entire family of aircraft which attracted large production orders and more or less kept Hawker"s (and its subsiduaries) from going bankrupt during the depression. It could be said that without the Hart there would have been no British aircraft industry to meet the threat of Nazi Germany at the end of the decade.

The first derivative of the Hart was the Hawker Demon, a fighter version intended to give Fighter Command some credibility, followed by an army cooperation version, the Audax, a naval version, the Osprey and an improved bomber version, the Hind.