Supermarine Attacker The Supermarine Attacker was a British single - seat naval jet fighter built by Supermarine for the Royal Navy ' s Fleet Air Arm ( FAA ) . It was the FAA ' s first jet fighter . Design and development . The Attacker developed from a Royal Air Force ( RAF ) fighter jet project , under Air Ministry Specification E . 10 of 1944 ( the E for experimental ) . The design of the Attacker used the laminar flow straight - wings of the Supermarine Spiteful , a piston - engined fighter intended to replace the Supermarine Spitfire , and what became the Attacker was originally referred to as the " Jet Spiteful " . The project was intended to provide an interim fighter for the RAF while another aircraft , the Gloster E . 1 / 44 also using the Nene was developed . An order for three prototypes was placed on 30 August 1944 , the second and third of which were to be navalised . An order for a further 24 pre - production aircraft , six for the RAF and the remaining 18 for the Fleet Air Arm was placed on 7 July 1945 . Handling problems with the Spiteful prototype delayed progress on the jet - powered version , leading to the pre - production order of 24 being stopped , although work on the three prototypes continued . The Fleet Air Arm instead bought 18 de Havilland Vampire Mk . 20 s to gain experience with jet aircraft . The RAF rejected both designs since they offered no perceptible performance advantage over the contemporary Gloster Meteor and the de Havilland Vampire , the RAF ' s first two operational jet aircraft . Supermarine offered a navalised version of the project to the Admiralty . The prototype Type 392 serial number " TS409 " land version was first flown on 27 July 1946 , by test pilot Jeffrey Quill . The Attacker suffered from a number of deficiencies which led to it quickly being superseded ; one being that the aircraft retained the Spiteful ' s tail - wheel undercarriage ( due to the extent of the re - tooling that would have been required to alter the Spiteful ' s wing ) , rather than a nose - wheel undercarriage , thus making the Attacker more difficult to land on aircraft carrier s . This same tail - down attitude meant operating from grass airfields , the jet exhaust would create a long furrow in the ground " three men could lie down in " . Also the new wing was apparently aerodynamically inferior to the original Spitfire elliptic one , with lower critical Mach number , leading to someone quipping that " they rather should have left the Spitfire wing on the thing " . The first navalised prototype , Type 398 " TS413 " flew on 17 June 1947 flown by test pilot Mike Lithgow , three years after the Meteor had made its first flight . Production orders for the FAA were placed in November 1949 . The first production aircraft to take to the skies was the F . 1 variant in 1950 , entering service with the FAA in August 1951 with the first squadron being 800 Naval Air Squadron . The F . 1 ' s armament consisted of four 20 mm ( . 79 in ) Hispano Mk . V cannon s , with 125 rounds of ammunition per gun . It was powered by a single Rolls - Royce Nene Mk . 101 turbojet engine . Operational history . The Attacker had a brief career with the Fleet Air Arm , not seeing any action during its time with the FAA and being taken out of first - line service in 1954 . It remained in service with the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve ( RNVR ) for a little while longer , being taken out of service in early 1957 . The Attacker was replaced in the front line squadrons by the later and more capable Hawker Sea Hawk and de Havilland Sea Venom . Between 1952 and 1953 , 36 Attackers also served in the Pakistan Air Force ( PAF ) until the type was completely retired in the 1960s . Variants . Two more variants of the Supermarine Attacker were built for the FAA . The FB 1 was a fighter - bomber which differed little from the F 1 except that it was expected to operate as a ground attack aircraft . The third , and last , variant of the Attacker was the FB 2 which introduced a new Rolls - Royce Nene engine and modifications to its structure . The Supermarine Attacker now had eight underwing pylons which could carry two 1 , 000 lb ( 454 kg ) bombs or eight unguided rockets . A second accident on 10 November 1955 , in Attacker FB . 2 ' WP281 ' , claimed the life of the chief Flying Instructor , Lieutenant Commander Charles James Lavender DSC [ see RNAS Stretton ]