Two men and a bomber over the Atlantic

In June 1919 a modified Vickers Vimy bomber, fitted with extra fuel tanks, took off from St John’s, Newfoundland, and came down at Clifden in County Galway. John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown had made the first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic and won the Daily Mail’s 10,000 pound prize; the aircraft is preserved in London’s Science Museum. The Vimy had been designed by Rex Pierson for a war that ended before it could fight; it became the backbone of the RAF’s heavy bomber force in the 1920s instead, and flew record routes to South Africa and Australia too.

From church bells to the Gunbus

The company behind it was much older than aviation. Vickers began in 1828 as a Sheffield steel foundry, founded by Edward Vickers and his father-in-law George Naylor, and its first fame came from casting church bells. It moved into armour, guns and warships, bought Maxim’s machine-gun company in 1897, and in 1911 set up an aviation department, opening a flying school at Brooklands in January 1912. In 1913 it showed an armed pusher biplane at Olympia, and its F.B.5 Gunbus, which flew on 17 July 1914, became the world’s first operational fighter aircraft.

The geodetic Wimpy

In 1927 Vickers merged with Armstrong Whitworth to form Vickers-Armstrongs, and in 1928 its aviation arm bought Supermarine, the Spitfire’s maker. At Brooklands, Barnes Wallis devised the geodetic lattice structure that gave the Wellesley and then the Wellington their strength. The Wellington, the Wimpy, first flew on 15 June 1936 and was the only British bomber built for the whole of the Second World War, with 11,461 or 11,462 made, more than any other British bomber. In 1943 a Broughton team built one, LN514, in 23 hours 50 minutes to beat a Californian record.

Valiant and the bomb

After the war the chief designer was George Edwards. His Valiant, first flown on 18 May 1951, was the first of the RAF’s V-bombers in service. On 11 October 1956 a Valiant flown by Edwin Flavell dropped Britain’s first atomic bomb over Maralinga in South Australia, and in May 1957 another dropped the first British hydrogen bomb over the Pacific. All eight British nuclear weapons ever detonated after an air drop fell from Valiants. Metal fatigue grounded the type, and it was retired in January 1965.

Viscount, VC10 and the end of the name

Vickers’ civil aircraft were as important. The Viscount, flown in 1948, entered service with BEA on 18 April 1953 as the first turboprop airliner, and its quiet cabin and big windows sold 445. The Vanguard was overtaken by jets, but the VC10, flown at Brooklands in 1962, set a subsonic Atlantic crossing record of 5 hours 1 minute that stood for 41 years, and served the RAF until 2013. By then the aircraft side had gone: in 1960 the government pressed it into the British Aircraft Corporation with Bristol, English Electric and Hunting, and the Vickers name for aircraft was dropped in 1965.

Fábricas

• Brooklands · Weybridge, Surrey — Main aircraft factory and flight test site from 1912
• Broughton · Hawarden, Flintshire, North Wales — Wartime Wellington shadow factory
• Blackpool · Squires Gate, Lancashire — Wartime Wellington factory

Pessoas

• Rex Pierson · chief designer — Designed the Vimy, Wellesley and led the Wellington
• Barnes Wallis · engineer — Devised the geodetic structure of the Wellington
• George Edwards · designer — Designed the Valiant
• John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown · aviators — First non-stop Atlantic crossing in a Vimy, St John’s to Clifden, June 1919; knighted a week later
• Edwin Flavell · RAF pilot — Dropped Britain’s first atomic bomb from a Valiant, 1956

Recordes e pioneirismos

• First non-stop transatlantic flight, Vimy, June 1919
• First operational fighter aircraft, F.B.5 Gunbus, 1914
• Fastest subsonic airliner Atlantic crossing, VC10, 5 h 1 min, held for 41 years
• Wellington LN514 built in 23 h 50 min, 1943