Vickers Vimy
The Vickers Vimy is a British twin-engined biplane heavy bomber designed by Rex Pierson and first flown on 30 November 1917. Built to bomb targets in Germany, it reached the RAF too late to fight in the First World War, but became the service's main heavy bomber of the early 1920s and found lasting fame in 1919, when Vimys made the first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic and the first flight from England to Australia. Wartime orders ran past 1,000 aircraft, though only a fraction of that total was ever completed, and the last examples left use in the 1930s.
Why It Mattered
The Vimy was designed in the closing phase of the First World War as a long-range bomber able to carry a one-ton bomb load to targets in central Germany. Deliveries to the RAF began in October 1918, only weeks before the Armistice, so the type never flew an operation in the war it was built for. Its name was made the following year, when Vimys flew non-stop across the Atlantic and then from England to Australia, both for the first time. In ordinary service it became the RAF's principal heavy bomber of the early 1920s. Writing in History of War, J. Rickard judges its main military significance to have been as a trainer that introduced RAF pilots to twin-engined aircraft.
Design Notes
Vickers' chief designer, Rex Pierson, designed the aircraft — designated F.B.27 inside the company — around a requirement for a night bomber able to reach targets in the German Empire. The result was an equal-span, four-bay biplane with a biplane tail unit and twin rudders, carrying a crew of three. Most of its bomb load was stowed vertically inside the fuselage, and there were gun positions in the nose and behind the wings. Engines were a recurring difficulty: the prototypes were tried with several different types before the Rolls-Royce Eagle VIII was settled on for production aircraft. A civilian version with a larger fuselage, the Vimy Commercial, first flew in April 1919, and the Vernon, a transport derivative, became the first troop-transport aircraft operated by the RAF.
Operational History
The first prototype, flown by Captain Gordon Bell, made its maiden flight from Joyce Green in Kent on 30 November 1917. Wartime contracts at one point totalled over 1,000 aircraft, yet by the end of 1918 Vickers had completed only 13. Production ran on after the Armistice: Vickers ultimately completed 112 aircraft under its wartime contracts, Westland built 25 of the 75 it was contracted for, and small further batches were built from 1923 to 1925. The type only reached full service status in July 1919, entering service with 58 Squadron in Egypt. Through the early 1920s it formed the RAF's main heavy bomber force, serving at home and in the Middle East until 1925, and between 1921 and 1926 it formed the backbone of the airmail service between Cairo and Baghdad. In June 1919 John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown flew a Vimy non-stop from Newfoundland to Ireland, the first direct trans-Atlantic flight. Britannica's biographies record that they took off from St John's on 14 June and landed 16 hours 12 minutes later in a bog near Clifden, Ireland. That November, Ross and Keith Smith, with mechanics Jim Bennett and Wally Shiers, flew from England to Australia in 28 days, carrying the first all-Australian crew to make the journey. Brooklands Museum groups a 1920 London-to-Cape Town flight with the Atlantic and Australia flights as the three long-distance journeys of 1919–20 that ensured the type's place in aviation history. History of War describes the type fading out of use by the early 1930s, although the final examples, flown as target aircraft for searchlight crews, are recorded as remaining in use until 1938.
Afterlife
Two aircraft from the 1919 flights survive as museum exhibits. Alcock and Brown's Vimy is displayed at the Science Museum in London. The Smith brothers' aircraft, G-EAOU, is preserved at Adelaide Airport; Australian Aviation reported that in 2022 it was moved into a new home inside the airport's expanded terminal. Replicas have kept the type in the public eye: volunteers of the Vintage Aircraft and Flying Association built one to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Atlantic crossing, and it flew from Brooklands in June 1969. Fire-damaged at Manchester weeks later, it was rebuilt to static standard for the RAF Museum. A second flying reproduction, commissioned in 1994, re-enacted the three long-distance flights of 1919–20, reaching Australia that year, South Africa in 1999 and re-crossing the Atlantic in 2005. Retired from flying in November 2009, it remains on display at Brooklands Museum.