The Hawker Sea Hawk is a British single-seat jet day fighter formerly of the Fleet Air Arm (FAA), the air branch of the Royal Navy (RN), built by Hawker Aircraft and its sister company, Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft. Although its design originated from earlier Hawker piston-engined fighters, the Sea Hawk was the company's first jet aircraft.

Following acceptance in the RN, the Sea Hawk proved to be a reliable and sturdy workhorse. A considerable number were also produced for the export market and were operated from aircraft carriers in Dutch and Indian service. The last operational Sea Hawks, operated by the Indian Navy, were retired in 1983.

Towards the end of the Second World War, Hawker's design team had become increasingly interested in developing a fighter aircraft that took advantage of the newly developed jet propulsion technology. Prior to this, Hawker had been committed until late 1944 to the production and further development of its piston-powered aircraft, such as the Hurricane, Tempest and Typhoon, to meet the wartime demands for these aircraft. On 1 September 1944, the first prototype of the company's latest fighter aircraft, the Hawker Fury/Sea Fury, conducted its maiden flight; it was this aircraft that would serve as the basis for Hawker's first jet-powered aircraft.

The design team studied the potential adaption of the aircraft, having opted to use the Rolls-Royce Griffon-powered Fury prototype as the starting point. The team started with the deletion of the piston engine, with its replacement, a single Rolls-Royce Nene turbojet engine, being fitted in a mid-fuselage position, along with lateral air intakes and a tailpipe which emerged beneath the tailplane. The prospective modifications also included "stretching" the fuselage and moving the cockpit to the extreme front of the fuselage in a re-contoured nose; this design received the internal designation P.1035. Use of the Rolls-Royce Derwent engine had been studied but quickly discarded as lacking power for an aircraft of this size. In November 1944 the P.1035 design was submitted for evaluation by the Air Ministry.

In December 1944 Hawker refined the proposed design substantially. The jet exhaust was moved from beneath the tail and re-designed as two short split-lateral bifurcated exhausts (which gained the name "trouser legs"), embedded in the trailing edge of the wing root, which needed a corresponding thickening of the wing root; the air intakes were moved to the wing root leading edge, similar to the contemporary de Havilland Vampire. The shorter unusual bifurcated jet pipe reduced pressure losses in the jet pipe and had the additional advantage of freeing up space in the rear fuselage for fuel tanks, which gave the aircraft a longer range than many other early jets. The absence of wing fuel tanks also meant a thinner wing could be adopted without the penalty of reduced range; to ease manufacture, the elliptical wingform of the Fury was discarded in favour of a straight tapered wing design. The fuselage fuel tanks, being fore and aft of the engine, also provided for a stable centre of gravity during flight. The tail plane was raised to clear the jet exhausts. The Sea Hawk also featured a nose wheel undercarriage arrangement, the first for a Hawker-built aircraft. The aircraft was built to accommodate four 20mm Hispano-Suiza Mk. V cannon.

The redesign had led to a new name for the project, P.1040. The Air Ministry quickly issued its encouragement for Hawker's development of the project but according to aviation author Francis K. Mason, the Air Ministry and the Admiralty had initially viewed the project with only academic interest. Official interest had also cooled by the expression of doubts voiced by Rolls-Royce Limited on the viability of the bifurcated jet pipes that the design used. Like the piston-powered Fury it had been derived from, Hawker remained keen to promote the P.1040 to the Royal Air Force (RAF) and to the Navy. The P.1040 was intended to be an interceptor, even though a top speed of only 600 mph was forecast. Shortly following the end of the war, the RAF decided to cancel several large orders for Hawker's piston-powered aircraft and to announce that the service would be taking no further interest in the P.1040 proposals.

Hawker elected to refine the P.1040 design as a private venture, albeit being prepared with a view for service with British military customers in mind. In October 1945, Sydney Camm, Hawker's chief designer, being satisfied with the results generated from engineering mock-ups and wind tunnel testing, authorised a production order for a prototype by the company's experimental department. In light of the diminished RAF interest in the project, allegedly due to the aircraft offering insufficient advances over the jet fighters that were already in service, such as the Gloster Meteor and de Havilland Vampire, in January 1946, a naval version of the P.1040 was offered by Hawker to the Admiralty as a fleet support fighter, as the P.1046.

The Admiralty was not enthusiastic, in part due to the development of the jet-powered Supermarine Attacker aircraft. The service was however intrigued by the long-range of the P.1040 and the promise of increased power from the Nene engine. In May 1946, the Naval Staff authorised the manufacture of three prototypes and a further test specimen, one of these being the original prototype internally ordered by Hawker, in accordance with Naval Specification N.7/46. Hawker quickly found their development focus for the type being divided between the naval P.1046 and the general-purpose P.1040, which was still hoped to be viable as an RAF fighter. The P.1040 would lead to the eventual development of the land-based swept wing Hawker Hunter fighter. Swept wing versions (P.1052 and P.1081) were built and experience gained with these were instrumental in developing the design of the Hunter.