Historical question: Vickers Viscount

[treadigraph]

Dart Mustang:

[washoutt]

The F-27 had a pneumatic system ilo a hydraulic one. The compressors for the pneumatics was on top of the engine, in front of the wing LE. The under gear should be retracted below the wing,to avoid breaking up the torsioon box, and therefore the engine cowling meets the top the wing, while the thrustline is below the wing, together with the main u/g. That leads to the "bent downward"| shape of the nacelles.

[Olympia463]

Originally Posted by Hot 'n' High

You know, sprogs like me missed out on so much in those early days. Dragged up out of some gutter way too late I wuz. The industry must have been absolutely fascinating with such a range of suppliers and so much going on - even as the War ended. We were fortunate to have such enterprising folk to take these ideas forward. It's quite hard to believe in this day and age really........

Yes, those were the days. On graduation I had nine offers from all the leading airframe and engine makers and I was interviewed by all of them. I spent nearly a month travelling the country at their expense. In the end I took the job with Rolls-Royce in Hillington that I could cycle to from home, as my mother was keen to keep an eye on me. It didn't work, as after a much shortened graduate apprenticeship I was put in the piston performance office. At the time R-R was short of design people, and my very limited time on the drawing board didn't seem to matter, so to Derby I went ,whether I liked it or not, the alternative being Catterick or Cardington for two years, to help Her Majesty protect the lieges.

R-R Derby was an amazing place in 1956. There were 150 young men from all the top universities in their graduate training scheme. The Conway office had four of us, all Scots, all firsts, and all working on drawing boards. The board next to mine was occupied by Stewart Miller, who later became Director of Engineering in RB211 days, and was instrumental in getting R-R out of that hole (though sadly, the overwork probably killed him). I knew him well and his wife Rosemary, we used to go Scottish dancing together. But it was incredible place to work with all that talent around. Unfortunately your promotion prospects were greatly reduced by this amount of talent,and I was an ambitious young man, so I left to join another company in 1959, and eventually.became their Chief Mechanical Designer. Rolls-Royce was a great place to be trained and it always looked good on your CV.

[megan]

treaders, sadly the dart Mustang never flew, an Oz built CA-18, exported from Oz to the US and exists still as below.




Cavalier built a Dart P-51, making two so converted but only one flyable.

By the way, if you think the Viscount nacelle was long, look at the Dart B17...

They had to do something to move the CoG forward from the tailplane. DC-3 similar.

[bean]

Originally Posted by amplitude1000

Thanks for all the replies, chaps, most informative. Magnificent cutaways. Evidently the "Alvis Leonides Viscount" was an urban myth, or perhaps just a faulty recollection on my uncle's part. I, also, wondered about the sufficiency of four such engines - might have needed six, like MRIA! (Kidding).

In parenthesis, I always thought the Ambassador a most elegant and attractive aircraft, if a little chubby-looking, and I've sometimes wondered how differently its service history might have turned out if it, too, had been built from the outset with a pressurised cabin and four Darts (I'm assuming the Napier Eland conversion was not a success - I've never heard that there was any production run).

The Ambassador was pressurised from the outset.
BEA tool 20 as insurance against failure of the Viscount.
They served BKS and Dan-Air magnigicantly on the second hand market. Last one retired 1971 and preserved Duxford

[FlightlessParrot]

Originally Posted by amplitude1000

In parenthesis, I always thought the Ambassador a most elegant and attractive aircraft, if a little chubby-looking, and I've sometimes wondered how differently its service history might have turned out if it, too, had been built from the outset with a pressurised cabin and four Darts (I'm assuming the Napier Eland conversion was not a success - I've never heard that there was any production run).

Perhaps "shapely" rather than "elegant"? And I wonder if that shapeliness, with constantly changing fuselage cross section, would have been a limitation to success if they had put turboprops on it. The Boeing plan of settling on a fuselage cross section and then extruding it by the yard for different sizes of aircraft has worked out better, though the Constellation did ok.

[washoutt]

Douglas started that stretching plan in the 1940's with the DC-4. Did the trick 3 times. The Constellation only once...

[Alan Baker]

Of course, the Super Constellation's extended fuselage was a constant section tube with the shapely nose and tail grafted on.

[pax britanica]

Perhaps that plethora of technologies and ideas was more hinderance than help to UK industry post war Viscount vs Ambassador , herald v 748 , V bombers (madness or what) .
What is indisputable though is that Vickers held out for Darts because in the dark days of the comet tragedies the Viscount, which was a truly excellent aircraft for its time, sold in sufficient numbers to give Uk industry some opportunity to manufacture on a significant scale which sadly only the 1-11 and 146 really came remotely close to needing .

The Comet gets the glory and the tragedy but surely it was the Viscount that was the foundation for an aircraft industry thats still significant , had it been built with recips it would never have been able to compete with the CV 240-440 series or the DC6 and where would UK aviation have gone from there.