Lockheed T-33

The T-33 and Biggles

The T-33 only features in derivative works although it would certainly have been rather ubiquitous during Biggles' Air Police years. It occurs in the Vandersteen comic Operatie Spacefighter where its crew on a night training flight believed they saw a ghost aircraft, that of a World War 2 German bomber (a plot element similar to that of Biggles Lays a Ghost).

Vandersteen chose a T-33 for this part of the story in Operatie Spacefighter. It's supposed to be happening in Northern Ireland but the R.A.F. did not use the T-33. However the markings are compatible with that of the Belgian Air Force. There's a similar FT-7 aircraft in reality. Perhaps the artist (who was Belgian) wanted to inject some local interest.

The T-33 shows up again in another Vandersteen comic strip, Basis op Kwan-Tia. The aircraft is operated by International Air Police personnel based on an island in the South China Sea. They perform reconnaissance patrols looking for a fleet of junks believed to be smuggling heroin. Some of them crash mysteriously because they have been sabotaged. Towards the end of the story, Biggles leads a flight of armed T-33s to attack and sink the drug smuggling convoy. Note that in this story the drawings of the aircraft clearly depict T-33s but the cover art shows the parent design of the T-33, the single seat F-80 Shooting Star fighter (as can be seen from the fact that it does not have tip tanks).