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Vickers Wellington
Sign in to saveAlso known as Wellington Bomber, Wellington
twin-enginded medium bomber family, 1936
Key facts
- Type
- Medium bomber , anti-submarine aircraft
- Manufacturer
- Vickers-Armstrongs
- Primary users
- Royal Air Force Royal Australian Air Force , Royal Canadian Air Force , Fleet Air Arm
- Number built
- 11,461 or 11,462
- Manufactured
- 1936–1945
- Introduction date
- October 1938
- First flight
- 15 June 1936
- Retired
- March 1953
- Developed into
- Vickers Warwick , Vickers VC.1 Viking
via Wikipedia infobox
~40 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The Vickers Wellington (nicknamed the Wimpy) is a British twin-engined, long-range medium bomber. It was designed during the mid-1930s at Brooklands in Weybridge, Surrey. Led by Vickers-Armstrongs' chief designer Rex Pierson, a key feature of the aircraft is its geodetic airframe fuselage structure, which was principally designed by Barnes Wallis. Development had been started in response to Air Ministry Specification B.9/32, issued in the middle of 1932, for a bomber for the Royal Air Force.
This specification called for a twin-engined day bomber capable of delivering higher performance than any previous design. Other aircraft developed to the same specification include the Armstrong Whitworth Whitley and the Handley Page Hampden. During the development process, performance requirements such as for the tare weight changed substantially, and the engine used was not the one originally intended.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Vickers Wellington” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.