Important information!
On 31 December 2025 Christer Landberg's Hawker Tempest Page was shut down after 28 years due to the cost of updating the platform.
While it is not being updated, the complete website is available here, both to preserve Christer's unique resource and to enhance the Newchurch Website; Newchurch, where this iconic aircraft was the mainstay of the fight against the V1 Flying Bomb.
In his parting message, before the live website closed Christer says:
"Thank you for this time, which has given me so many friends around the world!
Take care and lets hope there will be many more Tempests flying in the future!" (christerlandberg66@gmail.com)
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| Tempest Mk. II MW763:
On 10 October 2023 the first post restoration flight took place in the hands of Pete Kynsey when it flew from Sywell Aerodrome to the IWM Museum at Duxford. The first Tempest to fly in +50 years!!
Update: MW763 made its fourth flight on 29 January 2025!
Read more >>
Photo credit: Sywell Aviation Museum
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"Reaching Newchurch airfield at 480 mph I held "RB" down to 20 ft from the runway and then pulled her up to a 60 ° climb holding it as the speed dropped slowly off and the altimeter needle spun round the dial as if it were mad. At 7000 ft the speed was dropping below 180 mph and I rolled the Tempest lazily inverted, then allowed the nose to drop until the horizon, at first above my head, disappeared below (or rather above) the now inverted nose, the fields and woods steadied into the centre of the windscreen and then whirled around as I put the stick hard over and rolled around the vertical dive. Steadying again I pulled out over the tree tops at 500 mph, throttled back and pulled hard over towards the airfield in an over-the-vertical climbing turn, lowering the wheels and flaps in a roll as the speed dropped. What a magnificent aeroplane! They could have all their Spitfires and Mustangs!"
("My part of the sky", Roland Beamont)
"The Messerschmitt Me 262's most dangerous opponent was the British Hawker Tempest - extremely fast at low altitudes, highly-manoeuvrable and heavily-armed."
(Hubert Lange, Me262 pilot)
