In the years following the end of WW2, Great Britain focused their efforts on rebuilding their nation from the devastation caused by the war as the British government didn’t consider a new war possible in the following ten years. Under these circumstances, developing new military technology wasn’t considered a priority in most cases.

As a result, Great Britain found itself lagging behind in military aviation at the start of the 1950s by the outbreak of the Korean War. This prompted the RAF to hastily look for a new fighter aircraft to put into service, even if it meant taking into consideration an interim design.

One of the designs that sparked the RAF’s interest was a new swept-wing aircraft developed by the Supermarine company - the Type 510. Being in essence just a modified Supermarine Attacker, development of this design continued, eventually maturing into the Type 541.

Soon, the Type 541 received the highest development priority and was hastily rushed through testing and into production as the Supermarine Swift. In fact, production was so rushed that it began before necessary design changes could even be applied from the results of the test flights conducted with the Type 541 prototypes.

Nonetheless, the Supermarine Swift F.1 entered service with the RAF in February 1954, followed shortly afterwards by the F.2 variant. However, many of the aircraft’s teething problems weren’t resolved as a result of being rushed into production. This resulted in a number of accidents happening early on involving the Swift , leading to the aircraft being grounded for a time.

Newer modifications were developed, which addressed most of the known issues. However, it was a case of too little too late for the Swift, as it quickly became replaced by the Hawker Hunter. In the end, just under 200 Supermarine Swifts were produced out of the close to 500 planned aircraft. The Swift was phased out of active service relatively quickly after its introduction, with the last fighter models being withdrawn by the RAF in the mid to late 1950s.