It's way past time I did a little background, as the Hector is a little obscure. A new 'plane every eighteen months to two years? Well, such was the pace of development in the nineteen-thirties
The Hector is the last of the Hawker multi-role biplane family that began with the Hart, the grand-daughter if you like. Each one of the family had a different specific role, and all but the Hector had a variant or development of the Kestrel engine
The story really begins with the Fairey Fox, which came into service in 1925, and was the first light bomber fitted with an inline engine. As such it outperformed the current RAF fighters, like the Woodcock and Siskin. The Fox only ever equipped one squadron, 12, who still use a fox as their squadron badge to this day. Fairey committed the unforgivable sin of using an American engine, so the Fox replacement was undertaken by Hawkers, with the Rolls Royce Kestrel. And yes, the later Merlin engine was also named for a bird of prey, not a certain mage.
The Hart entered service in 1930, proving so capable the Air Ministry, as many Air Ministries are wont to do, said 'can you make one that does 'fill in role'?'
The first variant was the Demon, a two-seat fighter in the Brisfit mould. Interestingly,
Airfix's Demon kit began life as a Hart
Next is the Osprey, a 'navalised' Hart for fleet spotter / recce work
The Audax was an army co-operation aircraft; ground support, recce, messaging. It's known as 'the'Art with an 'ook' because of the message pick-up hook hanging underneath
The Hardy was a 'tropicalised' Audax, for use out in Empire, fitted with balloon tyres and extra engine cooling
The Hind was a dedicated bomber meant to replace the Hart. The Shuttleworth Collection have one of the few still flying, and it is very very pretty
The last of the line was the Hector. It was the Audax, army co-op, replacement. It was fitted with the more powerful Napier Dagger engine, as the Kestrel had about reached it's development potential, and there simply weren't enough to go round with all the Hind orders, as the RAF entered it's re-armament phase in the mid-'thrties. However, the Dagger wasn't suitable for tropicalisation, so the Hector never served abroad. The Hector was accepted for service before the prototype had flown, such was the goodwill generated by the Hart family. A Hart was used as test-bed, and the upper wing was straightened due to the change in the centre-of-gravity with the heavier engine. The Hector entered service late in 1936, and began to be replaced by Lysanders in 1938.
613 Squadron Hectors flew from the UK in defence and supply of Calais in 1940. Soon after they were relegated to target-towing duties, eventually being struck off charge in 1942, having been replaced by the Hawker Henley, a monoplane which began life as a light-bomber competitor to the Battle, the same year the Hector entered service. The only foreign user of the Hector was the Irish Air Corps
Oh, it was named for the Trojan prince. Was he Paris' big brother?
Many foreign Hart and Hind users fitted their aircraft with radials. Most of the prototypes of later variants were either Harts or Audaxes modified
There is also the Hartbees, more often called 'Hartbeeste', which was an Audax version built by and for South Africa
The Hawker Fury single-seat fighter was, sort-of, built to give the fighter squadrons a way to deal with it's big sister, the Hart
