Spacex Rocketship Hawk - Origin ?

 

To date, most of the Triang Spacex models have been successfully traced back to an inspirational drawing, design or pre-existing vehicle. Not so with the Hawk spaceship, a streamlined interceptor with swing wings.

The closest match so far is suggested as the Northop Freedom Fighter aircraft, as shown on Paul Vreede's encyclopaedic Spacex site:

http://www.triangspacextoys.info/SpGAtoys/Hawk/SpLTHawk.html

Whilst perusing some books on early German secret aircraft, I was browsing through the designs of Alexander Lippisch, who had planned some radical ramjet powered delta winged fighters.

https://fantastic-plastic.com/lippisch-dm-1-1945.html

https://fantastic-plastic.com/LippischP14CatalogPage.htm

https://fantastic-plastic.com/lippisch_p15-01.html

Following the second World War, Lippisch was tracked down and moved to America, under Operation Paperclip and put to work at Convair on super and hypersonic aircraft designs. Lippisch was responsible for the design of the Convair XF-92A, an early transonic X-plane. 

In 1950, he moved to Collins Radio Company, designing ground effect vehicles. Amongst other radical designs, he also devised patents for various ducted fan and annular wing aircraft.

Among them was a design which looked startlingly familiar:

Patent No: US2918229A from 1957 shows a ducted fan aircraft, with canard front ailerons, which bears more than a passing resemblance to the Hawk, as shown in Kevins scratchbuilt model and the original toy. Its conceivable that Triang designers may have come across this patent and made certain necessary changes to avoid copyright issues, such as adding swing wings and come up a new design.