In December 1967, the first delivery of a Boeing 737–200 was made to the launch customer United Airlines. The type commenced revenue service in April 1968 and proved to be the most successful aircraft ever made by the Seattle, Washington, USA based manufacturer.

On November 16, 1968, the 76th 737–200, manufacturer’s serial number (MSN) 19742, line number 96, rolled off the Plant 2 production line at Renton in Seattle, Washington. The customer for this airplane was Pacific Western Airlines (PWA), headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia (BC), Canada. It was the airline’s first 737–200, registered CF-PWD, and put to work on the airline’s ‘Stampeder’ service linking Edmonton, the capital of Alberta province, with Vancouver, BC in Canada’s vast western regions.

Bearing this registration, the aircraft may have achieved immortality of a sort as a 1:400 diecast model was produced for collectors, but locating such a model is elusive.

Continuing in service with PWA until May 1980, the Dash 200 was acquired by the Irish leasing company Guinness Peat Aviation (GPA) and registered as EI-BJE. GPA leased the aircraft to Nigeria Airways for the next five years, but a record of a Nigerian registration cannot be found. It is likely that the aircraft operated under the Air Tara, the wet-lease subsidiary (as distinct from operating lease subsidiary) of GPA branch as an Aircraft Crew Maintenance and Insurance (ACMI) contract, keeping its Irish registration. It certainly did yeoman service along the west coast of Africa for many years. When the Nigeria Airways lease terminated in April 1985, the airplane returned to the Irish lessor.

The picture below (courtesy of SmugMug) appears to show the aircraft in Nigeria Airways livery, but its antecedents are uncertain.

Meanwhile in South Asia, a new airline had been created. Airlanka (ICAO ALK, IATA UL) had risen phoenix-like from the ‘ashes’ of failed Air Ceylon (IATA AE) to become the new national carrier of Sri Lanka, a country which was just opening up its economy after many years of stagnation. Airlanka was originally mooted as a purely international long-haul carrier with services to Europe and the Middle and Far East, initially using Boeing 707s. Regional destinations, particularly in India, were intended to have been serviced by Air Ceylon, the country’s first flag-carrier now a regional airline flying the venerable Avro or HS-748.

But when Air Ceylon ceased to exist soon after Air Lanka had been launched, the need to operate to destinations in India could not be ignored. Consequently, a Boeing 737 was procured from Air Tara.

While Air Lanka expanded dramatically, acquiring an all wide-body fleet of Lockheed L-1011 TriStars and, for a brief period, two Boeing 747s, regional services continued to be flown by a succession of B737s acquired and operated on an ACMI basis. In 1985 a decision was made to change this arrangement, so the airline sought to acquire its own narrow-body aircraft and crew it with Sri Lankan pilots.

Thus, by a type of strange twist of fate not unknown in the airline industry, 737–200 MSN 19742 was leased to Air Lanka by GPA in June 1985, destined to end its days far away from the Pacific Northwest.

The only Air Lanka Boeing 737 and the least glamorous type in the airline’s modest fleet, it was registered 4R-ULH and named City of Galle. As a purely short-haul aircraft, with limited fuel capacity (a total of three tanks holding 4,200kg/9,260lb of fuel in each), no IRS (inertial reference system) or any other long-range navigation device, ‘ULH’ was destined to be a workhorse.

Based at the airline’s Colombo-Katunayake hub (IATA: CMB/ICAO: VCBI), the stubby ‘Fat Albert’ operated to Madras (now Chennai — MAA/VOMM) and Tiruchirapalli (Trichinopoly, or ‘Trichy’ — TRZ/VOTR) in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Trivandrum (now Thiruvananthapuram — TRV/VOTV) in Kerala, Bombay (now Mumbai — BOM/VABB), Malé (MLE/VRMM) in the Maldives, and Karachi (KHI/OPKC) in Pakistan. Given the relative proximity of those destinations to Colombo, there were no layovers for crew members. This meant that flying the 737 was not a particularly desirable gig, especially for cabin crew. They were attracted to the romance of Paris and Rome [Roma], the sophistication of London and Tokyo, and the alluring shopping opportunities offered by Bahrain [Mamlakat al-Bahrayn], Dubai [Dubayy], Singapore, and Bangkok.

But to the small group of pilots fortunate enough to fly ‘ULH’, it was the hidden treasure of the airline. Only nine pilots were on the 737 roster at any given time: five captains and four first officers. Only the chief pilot — an Irishman who remained with Air Lanka after the Air Tara lease deal had ended — was ‘permanent’. The others in the left seat were senior first officers from the wide-body types enjoying their first jet command. As for co-pilots, they were essentially ‘kids’ (this writer among them) having the time of their lives flying a jet aircraft for the first time. The small and dedicated group of engineers who maintained ‘ULH’ were all from the first batch that had trained together when Airlanka was founded. In some cases, the engineers and co-pilots were of similar ages, and even schoolmates in the case of two individuals. It all made for a great sense of camaraderie.

4R-ULH was one of the world’s most hard-working 737s. All six destinations were served multiple times a week, in some cases more than once a day. The flying was grueling and tiring but always fun, mostly in daylight, in and out of two monsoons — the fearsome Southwest or ‘Bombay’ monsoon, and the lesser-known but equally challenging Northeast ‘winter’ monsoon.

The Trivandrum–Trichy double-shuttle was a typical morning’s work. An early morning departure to TRV carrying migrant workers returning from the Gulf (all laden with huge bags), then back to CMB, could be followed by a mid-morning dash to TRZ with businessmen returning from Singapore. As each sector was just over 30 minutes’ flying time, the two hours of log book time would take all morning to accomplish. In those days, Trichy was quite a basic airport, with only a VOR (visual omnidirectional range) approach, no DME (distance measuring equipment), and not even VASI (visual approach slope indicator) lights on the approach. A mix of dead-reckoning and visual positioning was the only type of navigation that could be used because ULH did not have any supplementary navigation devices onboard. The coastline of India, a village water tank, a railway line, and a factory building were all utilized in turn to bring the aircraft onto final approach into TRZ. Although far removed from the digital autopilots and Cat 3 approaches the L-1011 pilots were used to, we all acclimatized quickly and thoroughly enjoyed the flying.

For variety, the Maldives service, carrying sun-seekers and dive enthusiasts, was a favorite. The Malé run was particularly enjoyable as the scenery (on a clear day) was breathtaking. It could also be a challenging route because once the aircraft was out of range of the Colombo VOR, it was dead-reckoning until we were close enough to pick up the MLE beacon. During the monsoon season, with squall lines and towering cumulus requiring multiple avoidance maneuvers, some handy flying skills were required to not only find the airport — a lonely atoll with not much around it in those days — and to make an approach and land in pouring rain.

The sole runway at MLE also ran north-south, possibly built in that direction as a convenient atoll was available but the prevailing wind was always from the southwest or northeast (depending on the monsoon) resulting in a strong crosswind. We became expert at landing in these conditions and it was always satisfying to smoothly transition from a ‘crab’ to a wing-down attitude in the flare.

Fuel was always a precious commodity onboard ‘ULH’. As an early 737–200, and not the later ‘Advanced’ model, it was limited in both range and performance, even with the later Pratt & Whitney JT8D-9A engines with which it was retrofitted. The maximum zero fuel weight (MZFW) of 39,916kg was often reached, and though it was airline policy to ‘tanker’ as much fuel as possible, the landing weight limit usually prevented this. Therefore, alternate fuel was always tight, and the luxury of being able to ‘hold’ (circle waiting for the weather to improve) was something which the pilots of ‘ULH’ were rarely able to do. This was particularly acute at the height of the monsoon, when the VMC (visual meteorological conditions) prevalent during most of the year would abruptly vanish.

The long night-flight from Colombo to Bombay, then on to Karachi, back to Bombay, and returning to Colombo at the crack of dawn, was the most tiring on the roster. During the summer monsoon it was really hard work, with thunderstorms encountered all the way up and back. On this flight the fuel tanks were full, but even that was barely enough to fulfill requirements. As a first command, it was certainly a wonderful ‘classroom’ in which to learn.

Because the airplane’s utilization was so high, a special maintenance plan was devised so that ‘ULH’ would spend about 30 hours every month undergoing a ‘grease-and-oil-change’ at its Katunayake base. This invariably fell on the third Thursday of the month, and because the aircraft could not fly that day, all its pilots and line-engineers had a night off. It soon became a tradition amongst this small, tightly-knit group of young men — who knew each other very well and were close friends — to gather in someone’s house every month and have a party while ‘ULH’ was being serviced. And what parties they were!

Sadly, though we didn’t know it, the flying days of ‘ULH’ would soon be over. On April 28, 1988, an Aloha Airlines 737–200 operating an inter-island service from Hilo, Hawaii, to Honolulu, suffered an explosive decompression that resulted in part of the roof and side walls being torn away. A flight attendant was tragically swept out of the airplane through a hole in the fuselage side, but miraculously no other lives were lost and the airplane diverted to Maui where it landed safely.

Investigations later revealed that the structural failure was caused by crevice corrosion exacerbated by metal fatigue. It soon became apparent that a similar fate could easily befall ‘ULH’ as it too was a high-cycle aircraft that, like the ill-fated Aloha Dash 200, was subject to many takeoffs and landings every day in hot and humid conditions. Accordingly, a series of maintenance procedures was put into place, but after five more years of tender loving care the cost of maintaining the 25-year-old City of Galle became too great. So in October 1993, 4R-ULH — by then one of the world’s highest-cycle 737s — was withdrawn from airline service and broken up for scrap, having reportedly logged around 46,000 hours of total time and some 70,287 cycles.

As a young man this writer was privileged enough to fly ULH as a junior First Officer. The 1000+ hours I spent in that flight deck are some of the happiest memories of my Airlanka days.

Ironically, post-retirement and after many years of flying Airbus fly-by-wire aircraft, I returned to the Boeing 737, in its -800 (New Generation or NG guise) for a short stint with Rex Airways in Australia. Though equipped with bigger engines and an EFIS instrument display, under the skin it was still a 737 and flew a lot like ULH did.

Flying Solo was originally published in Propliners on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When Sri Lanka’s first national carrier, Air Ceylon, ceased operations in 1979 it boasted a fatality-free flying record. But one of its aircraft came close to putting paid to that claim — twice — before the airline was two years old. This is the story of that airplane.

Air Ceylon started flying in December 1947 with a modest fleet of three Douglas DC-3 Dakotas. One of them had begun life in 1943 as a C-47 military transport, performing wartime duties first with the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), then Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF).

At war’s end, after service in the Middle East and India with the RAF type name ‘Dakota’ and military serial (registration) FL566, it joined the huge stocks of war-surplus aircraft ripe for picking by the multitude of new airlines taking wing in a global, post-war, commercial aviation boom.

Air Ceylon was one such enterprise, and in early 1947 the former RAF Dakota joined two other war-surplus Dakotas to form the nucleus of Ceylon’s nascent national carrier.

Befitting its new status as a commercial airliner, FL566 was reclassified as a DC-3 Dakota (‘DC’ standing for ‘Douglas Commercial’), received the Ceylonese civil registration VP-CAT, and was given the fleet name Sunetra Devi (sometimes spelt Sunethra Devi).

After Air Ceylon’s inaugural flight on December 10, 1947, operated by another of the trio of DC-3s, Sunetra Devi commenced duty on the fledgling airline’s domestic and regional network.

Upon receiving independence from Britain on February 4, 1948, Ceylon’s new government sought to make progress in various fields of endeavour. One was the purchase of a purse seine fishing trawler, the MV Halpha, for the Fisheries Department. But the boat was in Sydney, Australia, posing the ‘minor’ problem of how to move it from there to Ceylon.

Ceylon’s new-found confidence provided the answer. The country’s embryonic naval force, the Ceylon Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (CRNVR) — later titled Royal Ceylon Navy (RCyN) — would send a crew to take delivery of the trawler in Sydney and sail it over an 8,000-mile voyage to Colombo. And what better flag-flying mode of transporting them to Australia than the new national airline?

Air Ceylon at the time only had a small route network of relatively short sectors; and was nine months away from commencing long-haul international services in collaboration with Australian National Airways (ANA). The naval personnel too had little experience of navigating vessels over vast expanses of ocean. But that wasn’t going to stop the new government from showing the country, and the world, what “our boys can do”.

Presently, on Sunday, May 30, 1948 (by which time a fourth DC-3 had augmented Air Ceylon’s fleet), with Captain Peter Fernando in command Sunetra Devi took off from Colombo-Ratmalana Airport destined for Sydney. Its complement of naval passengers was headed by Lt. Cmdr. Carl Ohlmus, with other senior officers, NCOs (Non-Commissioned Officers), and lower ranks making up the numbers.

The flight would prove longer and more arduous than anything the DC-3 or its crew had previously undertaken. VP-CAT would create history by becoming the first airliner flown by an all-Asian crew to land in Australia. The charter flight was also the first non-scheduled service of any overseas airline to land at an Australian airport other than Darwin. But fate would come perilously close to preventing those ‘firsts’ from happening.

Flying over water in a twin-engine aircraft such as a DC-3 was not an option. Therefore VP-CAT was planned on a circuitous route (see map) around the Bay of Bengal and then across the Timor Sea to Darwin, on Australia’s sparsely populated Northern territory.

The first stop was at Madras (now Chennai), to refuel, before overnighting at Calcutta (Kolkata). The following day Sunetra Devi continued to Rangoon (Yangon), capital of Burma (Myanmar), for another routine ‘technical’ stop, then departed for its next destination, Singapore.

Leaving Rangoon at 9.30 am, Capt. Fernando and his crew expected to reach Singapore at around 5.30 pm. But after several hours aloft, with the Singapore ETA (expected time of arrival) approaching, weather conditions began deteriorating unexpectedly and rapidly. Dense clouds and rain reduced visibility to almost zero, forcing the pilots to rely only on their instruments to keep the DC-3 on course.

Lightning-induced static began interfering with radio communications and adversely affected the airplane’s navigation equipment. Lacking reliable information, the pilots could no longer determine whether Singapore still lay ahead, or if they had overflown the ‘Lion City’. To put it bluntly, they were lost.

While the DC-3 floundered in the stormy skies, the crew caught only occasional glimpses of the sea and hills through breaks in the cloud. Sunetra Devi was in imminent danger of flying into a rain-shrouded hill or crashing to earth or ocean after running out of fuel.

With precious fuel and time fast running out the pilots tried calling Singapore for guidance. Finally, Singapore Air Traffic Control (ATC) responded, telling the Air Ceylon crew that an RAF aircraft was being despatched to locate the disoriented DC-3 and provide directional assistance.

At last, thanks to instructions from the airborne but unseen RAF ‘angel of mercy’ to use a radio beacon they were unaware of, Sunetra Devi reached RAF Changi at 6.25 pm in the gathering dusk and gloom. Everyone’s sense of relief was compounded when it was discovered that the DC-3’s tanks held sufficient fuel for only another 30 minutes of flight.

Two days later, VP-CAT resumed its journey to Australia. Traversing Jakarta, Surabaya and Kupang (the latter in West Timor), they landed in Darwin. After having flown over 6,000km, they had just reached the coast of Australia. The outback’s harsh, endless landscape was still ahead of them though, with another 5,000km and five stops en route, to Sydney. Sunetra Devi finally arrived at her destination on June 5 at 12.40 pm and earned a footnote in history.

The disembarking navy men were probably looking forward to returning home by sea, an element that was, to them, far more familiar and reassuring than the dangerous skies they had recently encountered.

VP-CAT landed back at Ratmalana on June 17, and the Air Ceylon crew were hailed as heroes. Their brush with death over Singapore was little more than a dim memory. For the ill-fated DC-3, however, another appointment with danger was not far away.

Part 2is here and will conclude the story of Sunetra Devi’s career at Air Ceylon.

The Saga of Sunetra Devi -Part 1 was originally published in Propliners on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Second World War ground to a halt in Europe in the Spring of 1945. Large swathes of the world had been destroyed. Millions of people, mainly civilians not combatants, had been killed and displaced. America’s industrial might and the Soviet Union’s ability to bear mass casualties (the USSR suffered almost nine million military casualties in addition to 19 million civilian deaths) had finally broken the fighting capacity of the mighty German Wehrmacht.

Most importantly, total command of the skies had allowed the Allies overwhelming tactical superiority on the battlefield while permitting air transport to play a vital logistical role. Without a doubt, aviation was going to play an important part in the brave new post-war world.

As Britain entered a new era of peace, there was much optimism despite the war damage and huge cost in men and material. The British public, as they voted to reject the Conservative government led by wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1945, blithely assumed that the Empire would endure, with a return to prosperity just around the corner. The colonies had borne enormous casualties though, with the Indian Army alone recording 36,000 dead from a pre-war headcount of around 200,000. The world would never be the same at it was in 1939 when the titanic struggle had begun.

Post-war recovery

A new British government was voted into power with an overwhelming majority just weeks after Germany surrendered but with the fighting against Japan still raging. Prime Minister Attlee’s Labour government promised a refashioned Britain with enhanced social security, a National Health Service, government-run utilities, and nationalized transport networks which would fuel an economic resurgence.

Labour’s grand plans for civil aviation centered around two state-owned airlines: BEA (British European Airways) serving the Continent and British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC), connecting the colonies and the Americas.

The Ministry of Aircraft Production, which had overseen the huge effort to build fighters and bombers during the conflict, appointed a high-powered committee led by Lord Brabazon to design a suite of aircraft for the future transport needs of the Empire.

Enter the Viking

Meanwhile the manufacturers who had prospered during the war, pivoted to producing civilian aircraft. Among the first of these was the Vickers VC.1 Viking, a twin-engine short haul airliner with a tailwheel undercarriage derived from the Wellington bomber and intended to be a replacement for the ubiquitous Douglas DC-3 Dakota.

Four prototypes were built. One crashed without fatalities but the others went on to successfully demonstrate the viability of the design. Initially constructed with a metal fuselage and fabric-covered geodetic wings (a Vickers trademark), the type was designated the Viking 1A. A later model, the Viking 1, had metal wings, followed by the 1B, with a longer fuselage and more powerful piston engines. This latter version was the most successful, with over 100 built, including four for the King’s Flight and operated by the RAF.

As the Empire gradually faded away, with many colonies gaining independence soon after the war. India, known as the ‘Jewel in the (Empress Victoria’s) Crown’ due to the enormous wealth generated by the sub-continent for its British rulers, attained self-rule in 1947. While the Empire was being dismantled though, air transport remained vital. The Vickers Viking was operated by Air India, Indian Airlines and Indian national Airways. They were affectionately known as the Pregnant Duck, due to their squat stance, by the pilots who flew them.

The Viking was a frequent visitor to Ceylon’s Ratmalana airport, replacing the Dakotas that were previously operated on that route.

Turbine power

Interestingly one Viking, designated the Type 618 Nene-Viking, was fitted with two Roll-Royce Nene turbojet engines for testing purposes. This aircraft flew across the English Channel in July 1948, on the 39th anniversary of Frenchman Louis Bleriot’s first crossing and set a series of records. Sadly, rather than developing this turbine-powered version further, Vickers refitted the airframe with piston engines and reconfigured it as a Viking 1B for Eagle Aviation.

The Valetta

Seeking to replace the almost 2,000 Dakotas in its wartime fleet, the RAF ordered a military version of the VC.1 designated the Valetta. Vickers’ fondness for alliteration had obviously survived the war.

The Valettas proved successful with the RAF, a total of 262 were produced seeing service all over the far-flung reaches of the Empire, even as the latter shrank dramatically. They have a special place in this writer’s heart, as a squadron of Valettas were based at RAF Negombo (Katunayake) in Ceylon, (now Sri Lanka) servicing RAF Gan, a remote atoll in the Maldives.

The last production version of the Valetta was succeeded by a tricycle undercarriage version intended to be a ‘flying classroom’ or training aircraft for the RAF and appropriately named the Varsity. A total of 163 were built, all but one going to the RAF mainly to train bomber pilots.

The sole exception to the RAF was the Swedish Air Force, who operated one example of a modified Valetta for 20 years in an electronic intelligence role.

With the success of the Varsity, Vickers considered a civilian version to be designated the VC.3. But the success of the Vickers VC.2 Viscount, one of the great ‘Propliners’ led to a new era in the world of air transport and so the the VC.3 concept was never built.

Part 1 of this story is here. Please read that and follow Propliners. Thank you for your attention.

Vickers’ Alliterative Flying Family — Part 3 was originally published in Propliners on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As war clouds gathered over Europe, Vickers (as we know) was already in the arms manufacturing business. The aviation department was started in 1911, and in addition to fixed-wing designs and a flying school, the company launched an initiative to build a dirigible or airship.

This was in response to the Admiralty’s alarm at the growing capability of Germany’s fleet of airships produced by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin and known eponymously as ‘Zeppelins’.

Vickers Airships

Vickers’ first design was grandly designated as His Majesty’s Airship №1 (following the tradition of naming naval vessels as His Majesty’s Ships or HMS) and formally named HMA Hermione. The ‘lower-deck’ (other ranks in Britain’s rigidly class-based navy) were skeptical of the venture and nicknamed it the ‘Mayfly’, which proved to be prophetic.

On 24 September 1911, the Hermione emerged on its first outing and promptly broke in two! British humourists immediately cashed in with a string of jokes such as, “It was the May Fly but now it is the Won’t Fly”.

Vickers Aircraft

As we mentioned in Part 1 of this series, Vickers continued to design and build aircraft, with the Vickers Vimy in particular, which proved to be an excellent machine. The company would merge with Armstrong-Whitworth in 1927 to form Vickers-Armstrong.

During this period, which saw frantic rearming by European nations who recognized that another conflict was looming, in 1935 Vickers-Armstrong designed a single-engine successor to the Vimy, the Wellesley light bomber. The RAF operated six squadrons of Wellesleys with the type setting a world record by flying non-stop from Ismailia, Egypt to Darwin, Australia in 1938. Considered unsuitable for the European theater during WW2, the Wellesley saw action in the Middle East and North Africa during that conflict.

Building on the success of the Wellesley, and using the same geodesic airframe developed by Barnes Wallis, Vickers produced the Wellington twin-engine bomber a year later. Both types were named to honour Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duke of Wellington and the architect of Britain’s victory over Napoleon in the previous century.

The Wellington

Introduced to service in 1938, the Vickers Wellington was used in many roles and had a multitude of variants. It would go on to become the most produced British bomber with over 11,000 built and the only one that was manufactured throughout the entire conflict.

There were a plethora of variants of the Wellington, or Wimpy as it was nicknamed, built with varying engines, roles and capabilities. Later in the war, although it was supplanted in the heavy bomber role by larger types (such as the Avro Lancaster, Short Stirling and Handley Page Halifax), the Wellington was in many ways the backbone of the RAF’s Bomber Command.

Following the naming convention set by the Ministry of War, heavy bombers were named after a British city or town, as seen with the Avro Lancaster, hence Vickers’ departure (reluctantly we assume) from their preference for names beginning with the letter ‘V’. The Wellington and its later variant, the Warwick of which 846 were produced, represented over 75 percent of the total number of aircraft built by the company during the war.

Post- WW2

By the end of the war, the role of aviation in the modern world was beyond dispute. While the British produced mainly fighters and bombers, the many thousands of transport aircraft manufactured in the USA had provided the logistical support so vital for victory.

The main non-combat type was of course the legendary Douglas C-47 transport in extensive service with the US Army Air Force and known as the Dakota by the RAF. Originally designed as a civil airliner named the Douglas Commercial Type 3, or DC-3, the type became known as ‘the aircraft that changed the world’.

Eager to use its expertise in mass manufacturing aircraft and the company’s accomplished design team, Vickers-Armstrong decided to enter the rapidly growing civilian aircraft market.

With the British bomber naming convention no longer applicable, the company’s preference to have names beginning with the letter V could be resumed. Accordingly, Vickers’ first purely civilian type was designated the Vickers Commercial VC.1 (a nod to Douglas and the DC naming convention perhaps?) and named the Viking.

The design was influenced by the British government’s specification for an interim medium-haul passenger aircraft to replace the thousands of Dakotas in use, until such time as the advanced types formulated by the Brabazon Committee would be available.

Vickers’ Alliterative Flying Family — Part 2 was originally published in Propliners on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By the dawn of the new century, Vickers (the name was abbreviated in 1911) was a prominent arms manufacturer, primarily for the (British) Royal Navy. Capitalizing on a new technological frontier opening with the invention of the airplane, Vickers started an Aviation Department and a flying school, the latter based in Brooklands, Surrey.

During the years 1914 to 1918, as the First World War devastated Europe, the company seemed to have done quite well as a maker of ordnance, ships and submarines.

The Vimy

Perhaps using profits generated during the war, Vickers made a foray into designing and building aircraft, producing the Vickers Vimy bomber (someone in the company loved alliteration, hence our title!) which didn’t see service during WW1, but formed the core of the RAF’s (Royal Air Force) bomber fleet from 1919 for the next decade.

The type became famous for completing the first trans-Atlantic crossing in 1919, flown by John Alcock (a test pilot for Vickers) with Arthur Whitten Brown as his navigator. The success of that flight (since overshadowed by Charles Lindbergh’s solo crossing in 1927) made Vickers and the duo famous. They were both knighted by King George V, and the Vickers Vimy placed on display at the Science Museum in London, where it still can be seen.

The Vickers Vimy is also well-known in Australia as the winner of the Great Air Race of 1919. The Australian government offered a prize of £10,000 to the first Australians to fly a British aircraft (not a French or American machine— colonial prejudice was strong!) from Great Britain to Australia.

Two brothers from Adelaide (South Australia), Ross and Keith McPherson Smith, along with Sergeants Jim Bennett and Wally Shiers, left Hounslow Heath (near today’s Heathrow airport) in a Vickers Vimy on 12 November 1919. They reached Darwin, Australia on 10 December, having flown a total of 135 hours in 28 days to win the prize.

To put this in perspective, when Qantas operated non-stop flights between Darwin and London a few years ago, it only took around 18 hours in a Boeing 787!

The Viking

The original Vickers Viking was a single-engine amphibious aircraft designed in 1918. It is mostly known for having killed two famous aviators. The first was Alcock, who was piloting the new machine for display at the Paris Airshow but crashed in fog in December 1919 at Normandy, France.

Ross Smith, by then Sir Ross Smith KBE, also died at the controls of a Viking amphibian at Brooklands in 1922. His body was transported to Australia and given a state funeral at the North Road Cemetery in Adelaide.

A total of 31 Vikings was built and operated by the RAF and a few other countries’ air arms, including the Royal Canadian Air Force. Vickers revived the ‘Viking’ name in 1945 on a twin-engine, short-range airliner designated VC.1 Viking (‘Vickers Commercial’ 1). Although only moderately successful as an airliner, examples of the post-WW2 Viking served as test-beds for the turboprop and turbojet engines then coming into general usage. The basic Viking design also spawned the Valetta and Varsity derivatives, which served the RAF as military transports and navigation trainers, respectively. Propliners will take up the Vickers story in future installments.

To all my readers — Apologies for the long silence. I got tempted back into flying professionally, which left little time for writing. The ruthless nature of the airline business has meant that company didn’t last long, so I am able to return to my second love of writing.

Please do follow me and continue reading the subsequent installments of this story.

Vickers’ Alliterative Flying Family was originally published in Propliners on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.