COMIC ONLY MACHINERY : GROUP ONE JET

The Group One Operational Force appears at the top of page 22 in the 1969 PROJECT SWORD ANNUAL as part of the 'Moon Crawler' story. It is scrambled to fly over the Pennines to evacuate 'Sword Citizens' Protection Camps Alpha and Beta' threatened by volcanic eruption! There are two things about the Group One Jets - the unusual lead jet and the four T1's. The lead yellow craft is not based on a SWORD toy, looking more like a private jet than anything. It's obvious closest relatives are the Task Force jets, which are represented here by the four T1's. These are, however, as first noted on the GACCH Sword Annual website in 2006, completely different to the Task Force 1 toy plane that we are all familair with. They have much stubbier wings like fighter planes, whereas the toy is virtually a 3-winged arrowhead only rarely seen in few other toys such as this tinplate one. Oddly enough the correct T1 toy design does appear in the 3031 story on page 58. I'm unsure where the artist got his ideas from for Group One but I do like them and as I live not too far from the Pennines I often peer up when I hear the roar of jet engines!