Hunting Percival Aircraft Ltd was a British aircraft manufacturer with roots stretching back to the early 1930s. Founded by Edgar Percival, the company built a distinguished reputation for elegant, high-performance light aircraft before evolving — through the Hunting Group acquisition — into a producer of military trainers and transport aircraft. The Percival and Hunting Percival lineage spans prewar racing monoplanes, wartime communications aircraft, postwar piston trainers, and pioneering jet trainer designs that influenced a generation of air forces worldwide.
The Online Aviation Library holds a growing collection of original service manuals, overhaul handbooks, parts catalogs, and technical orders covering the aircraft listed below. Each collection is continuously expanded as new documentation is acquired, with free lifetime updates provided to all purchasers.
Percival Aircraft
- Percival Gull – Four-seat touring monoplane; the aircraft that established Percival's reputation for speed and elegance in the early 1930s.
- Percival Vega Gull – Refined development of the Gull; used extensively for long-distance record flights, including Amy Johnson's 1936 Johannesburg run.
- Percival Mew Gull – Single-seat racing monoplane; one of the fastest piston aircraft of its era, winning the King's Cup Air Race multiple times.
- Percival Q.6 Petrel – Twin-engine six-seat executive transport; widely used by the RAF and RAAF for communications and light transport duties.
- Percival Proctor – Four-seat monoplane derived from the Vega Gull; served as the RAF's primary radio trainer and communications aircraft throughout WWII.
- Percival P.40 Prentice – Side-by-side two-seat basic trainer; replaced the Tiger Moth in RAF service postwar, featuring a fully enclosed cockpit and modern instrumentation.
- Percival P.48 Merganser – Twin-engine light transport prototype; predecessor to the Prince series.
- Percival P.50 Prince – Twin-engine feeder airliner and executive transport; operated by numerous airlines and government operators in the early 1950s.
- Percival P.54 Survey Prince – Specialist photographic survey variant of the Prince; equipped with vertical and oblique cameras for aerial mapping operations.
- Percival P.56 Provost – Piston-engined basic trainer selected by the RAF in 1950; robust, forgiving handling made it a highly regarded ab initio trainer.
- Percival P.66 Pembroke – Twin-engine communications and light transport aircraft; served with the RAF, Royal Navy, and numerous export air forces well into the 1980s.
- Percival P.66 President – Civil executive transport variant of the Pembroke; offered to commercial and government operators.
- Percival P.74 – Experimental 8-seat gas turbine/tipjet powered helicopter; an ambitious research programme that did not proceed to production.
- P.87 – Proposed fixed-wing DC-3 replacement study; project not built.
Hunting Aircraft
- Hunting Percival P.84 Jet Provost – Jet-powered development of the piston Provost; became the RAF's standard jet basic trainer and was exported widely. The Jet Provost lineage directly influenced the BAC Strikemaster.
- Hunting H.126 – Experimental STOL research aircraft built to investigate blown flap technology; flew with the Royal Aircraft Establishment and contributed to boundary layer control research.
- Hunting H.107 – 30-seat short-haul airliner project initiated by Hunting; evolved after the BAC merger into the larger BAC 107 and ultimately the BAC One-Eleven programme.
Documentation in the Online Aviation Library
Our Hunting Percival collections include original Air Publication (AP) series documents, manufacturer's maintenance manuals, parts catalogs, and technical orders sourced from institutional and private archives. Coverage spans the Proctor, Prentice, Provost, Pembroke, Prince, and Jet Provost families, with additional documentation being added on an ongoing basis.
All collections are available as instant digital downloads, formatted for screen reading and printing. Purchasers receive free lifetime updates as new documents are added to each collection.
Browse the full Hunting Percival range at onlineaviationlibrary.com.