When Hawker Aircraft Ltd. was introducing their Sea Fury prop-driven naval fighter in 1944, they began to consider how to apply the new jet-engine technology to the Fury design. Rolls-Royce had just introduced the famous “Nene”, that had adequate thrust to propel the big Fury airframe. In November 1944, Hawker provided a preliminary concept of a Nene-powered Fury to the British government, with the designation P.1035. And that was the start of the Sea hawk... The first prototype flew on September 2, 1947.

In 1951, the "Super-Priority" scheme was accelerated to speed the production of certain critical aircraft, and the Sea Hawk was one of them. The end result was that manufacturing was relocated to Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft (another member of the Hawker Siddeley group) and the Sea Hawks started appearing at the RAF carriers.

It was an elegantly streamlined straight-wing jet fighter. The Sea Hawk had air intakes in the wing roots, and the jet pipe was bifurcated to create more room in the aft fuselage, with jet nozzles just aft of the wing. It was not an advanced design, but it had beautiful handling characteristics.

The Sea Hawk was built for the Royal Navy, the Dutch MLD, the German Marineflieger, and India. With the last production in 1961 and serving until the early 1980s was a very successful aircraft. Until the production ended 537 Sea Hawks were built.