Vickers Windsor
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The Vickers Windsor was a
Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...
four-engine
heavy bomber Heavy bombers are bomber Fixed-wing aircraft, aircraft capable of delivering the largest payload of air-to-ground weaponry (usually Aerial bomb, bombs) and longest range (aeronautics), range (takeoff to landing) of their era. Archetypal heavy ...
, intended for high altitude flight. The Windsor was designed by
Barnes Wallis Sir Barnes Neville Wallis (26 September 1887 – 30 October 1979) was an English engineer and inventor. He is best known for inventing the bouncing bomb used by the Royal Air Force in Operation Chastise (the "Dambusters" raid) to attack ...
and
Rex Pierson Reginald Kirshaw "Rex" Pierson CBE (9 February 1891 – 10 January 1948) was an English aircraft designer and chief designer at Vickers Limited later Vickers-Armstrongs Aircraft Ltd. He was responsible for the Vickers Vimy, a heavy bomber de ...
at the
Vickers-Armstrongs Vickers-Armstrongs Limited was a British engineering conglomerate formed by the merger of the assets of Vickers Limited and Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth & Company in 1927. The majority of the company was nationalised in the 1960s and 1970s, w ...
factory at
Brooklands Brooklands was a motor racing circuit and aerodrome built near Weybridge in Surrey, England, United Kingdom. It opened in 1907 and was the world's first purpose-built 'banked' motor racing circuit as well as one of Britain's first airfields, ...
. Three prototype aircraft were built but planned production was cancelled due to the end of the war.


Design and development

As a possible replacement for the pre-war
Vickers Wellington 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 t ...
medium bomber, Vickers had proposed a series of designs. The first, to meet the same specification as the Bristol Buckingham and Air Ministry Specification B.11/41, was for a high speed twin-engined medium bomber, with remote controlled turrets in engine nacelles and guns in the nose. This was considered to be neither fast enough to be a fast bomber nor well armed enough to be a normal medium bomber. A four-engined development of the same design was also drawn up. The official position was that the Wellington was becoming obsolete but as the Vickers factories were set up only for geodetic construction any design would need to be based on that method. Vickers were working on a Wellington with a pressurised cabin for high altitude work and the Ministry was interested in a pressurized version of the
Warwick Warwick ( ) is a market town, civil parish and the county town of Warwickshire in the Warwick District in England, adjacent to the River Avon, Warwickshire, River Avon. It is south of Coventry, and south-east of Birmingham. It is adjoined wit ...
; this was supported by Lord Beaverbrook. The proposed design changed the twin-engined Warwick wing for an
elliptical wing An elliptical wing is a wing planform whose leading and trailing edges each approximate two segments of an ellipse. It is not to be confused with annular wings, which may be elliptically shaped. Relatively few aircraft have adopted the elliptic ...
with four Merlin engines. The aircraft was expected to manage having delivered of bombs. The contract for two prototypes of the Warwick was covered by Specification B.5/41 and development and construction work proceeded until September 1942. In mid-1942, the Wellington replacement and B.5/41 were merged as a result of a new specification, B.3/42 for a Lancaster replacement but without high altitude performance. Vickers could take the work already done along and fit the four-engine wing to a new design of fuselage and a contract was raised for what would become the Windsor. The wings of the first prototypes were built to the earlier specification and so had lower weight limits imposed. The Windsor was designed to Air Ministry Specification B.5/41 (later modified to Spec. B.3/42) for a high-altitude heavy bomber with a pressurised crew compartment and an ability to fly at at . Notable features of the Windsor included its pressurised crew compartment. The main undercarriage consisted of four single-wheel oleo struts - one in each engine nacelle. The defensive guns were mounted in
barbette Barbettes are several types of gun emplacement in terrestrial fortifications or on naval ships. In recent naval usage, a barbette is a protective circular armour support for a heavy gun turret. This evolved from earlier forms of gun protection ...
s at the rear of each outboard nacelle, which were to be remotely operated by a gunner in a pressurised compartment in the extreme tail. The Windsor used Wallis's geodetic body and wing structure that Vickers had previously used in the Wellesley, Wellington and Warwick bombers. In these aircraft the wing structure flexural strength in bending and the torsional stiffness were calculated (and designed) as being controlled separately by a single spar and the geodetic lattice construction respectively. However, testing of wings showed that the geodetic structure also contributed to the wing bending resistance so, for the Windsor, Wallis designed the wing so the geodetic structure would take all the torsional and bending loads. This was achieved by gradually reducing the lattice angle (45 degrees relative to the span) at the wing tips to about 15 degrees at the root. A spar was not needed so there was more room for fuel. With no spar the wing was more flexible than before and there was concern that excessive deflections would occur in an emergency landing with wings full of fuel. To limit the deflection at the wing tip Wallis added an extra landing gear leg in the outboard engine nacelles. This also made the undercarriage in each nacelle more compact than two large struts used on other British heavy bombers. Instead of doped Irish
linen Linen () is a textile made from the fibers of the flax plant. Linen is very strong and absorbent, and it dries faster than cotton. Because of these properties, linen is comfortable to wear in hot weather and is valued for use in garments. Lin ...
covering used on the earlier geodetic aircraft, a stiff and light skin was used on the Windsor. This was made from woven steel wires and very thin ( thickness) stainless steel ribbons, doped with
PVC Polyvinyl chloride (alternatively: poly(vinyl chloride), colloquial: vinyl or polyvinyl; abbreviated: PVC) is the world's third-most widely produced synthetic polymer of plastic (after polyethylene and polypropylene). About 40 million tons o ...
or other plastic, specially designed to avoid ballooning. To properly fit the skin to the frame, a tuning fork had to be used. There was only room in the cockpit for the single pilot.


Operational history

Only three examples (the original plus successive prototypes known as Type 457 and Type 461) were built. This was due to refinements in the existing
Lancaster Lancaster may refer to: Lands and titles *The County Palatine of Lancaster, a synonym for Lancashire *Duchy of Lancaster, one of only two British royal duchies *Duke of Lancaster *Earl of Lancaster *House of Lancaster, a British royal dynasty ...
bomber, rendering it suitable for the role for which the Windsor had been designed. The first prototype, serial ''DW506,'' flew on 23 October 1943, the second (''DW512)'' on 10 or 15 February 1944, and the third (''NK136'') on 11 July 1944. All three were built at Vickers' secret dispersed Foxwarren Experimental Department between
Brooklands Brooklands was a motor racing circuit and aerodrome built near Weybridge in Surrey, England, United Kingdom. It opened in 1907 and was the world's first purpose-built 'banked' motor racing circuit as well as one of Britain's first airfields, ...
and nearby Cobham. DW506 was assembled at Farnborough, DW512 flew from
Wisley Wisley is a village and civil parish in Surrey, England between Cobham and Woking, in the Borough of Guildford. It is the home of the Royal Horticultural Society's Wisley Garden. The River Wey runs through the village and Ockham and Wisley C ...
. The two latter prototypes were tested until the end of the Second World War, when further development and production were cancelled. After 40 flights ''DW506'' crashed on 2 March 1944. During flight tests of engine
feathering Feathering is a technique used in computer graphics software to smooth or blur the edges of a feature. The term is inherited from a technique of fine retouching using fine feathers. Paintbrush feathering Feathering is most commonly used on a ...
one of the engines could not be brought back into use and the pilot made an emergency landing. The aircraft ran off the end of the runway and into a ditch breaking in half. Its rudder was reused on ''DW512''. ''DW512'' had more equipment fitted - including some armour but no armament - than ''DW506''. It was grounded in November 1945 with the end of the project and marked for disposal in June 1946. The armament for ''NK136'' was not ready until January 1945 and was ground tested in April. Air firing was begun at the end of May with ''DW512'' as an accompanying camera aircraft. After the end of its flying life in November 1945 ''NK136'' became an instructional airframe at
RAF Manby Royal Air Force Manby or more simply RAF Manby is a former Royal Air Force station located in Lincolnshire, England The following units were here at some point: * No. 1 Air Armament School (1937–1944) absorbed by the Empire Air Armament School ...
until scrapped in 1948. Two pre-production airframes were under construction; Type 471 (later Type 483) ''NN670'', with Merlin 85s and expected 4,000 mile range, was nearly complete and being readied for first flight while ''NN673'', to have Merlin 100s, was about halfway built. Production contract for 300 Type 483 Windsors had been placed in 1943, by mid 1945 it was expected that deliveries would begin in July 1946. When it still looked like the war in the Pacific against Japan would be continuing, it was thought that as many as 30 squadrons could be equipped with the Windsor. The production contract had been cut back to 100 though by November 1944, then reduced to 40 and with the end of the war against Japan cancelled completely.


Variants

;Type 447 :First prototype, serial ''DW506'', powered by four Rolls-Royce Merlin 65 engines. ;Type 457 :Second prototype, serial ''DW512'', powered by four Merlin 85 engines. ;Type 461 :Third prototype, serial ''NK136'', powered by four Merlin 85 engines, armed with a pair of 20mm guns in each remote-controlled barbette in rear of outer engine nacelles, aimed from the unarmed tail position. A Type 601, also known as the "Clyde Windsor", was proposed and would have been the Windsor B.II in service. This would use the
Rolls-Royce Clyde The Rolls-Royce RB.39 Clyde was Rolls-Royce's first purpose-designed turboprop engine and the first turboprop engine to pass its civil and military type-tests. As with subsequent Rolls-Royce gas turbines, it was named after a river, the Rive ...
turboprop engine with - if available -
contra-rotating propellers Aircraft equipped with contra-rotating propellers (CRP) coaxial contra-rotating propellers, or high-speed propellers, apply the maximum power of usually a single engine piston powered or turboprop engine to drive a pair of coaxial propellers i ...
for a top speed of over 400 mph. One of the pre-production Windsors ordered (''NN673'') would have been fitted with Clydes as a prototype. When the production was cancelled Vickers asked that one of the Windsor prototypes could be fitted with the Clyde engines for research, but this was also cancelled in early 1946. Type 482 covered four civilian airliner designs based on the Windsor. In November 1943, an unpressurised continental (40 seats) or Empire route (24 seat/18 sleeper) aircraft and a transatlantic (also 24/18) aircraft. Followed in January 1944 by pressurised designs, one with a stressed skin fuselage and the other covered by Geosteel, with the pressure cabin being a rubberised bag within the structure.


Operators

; *
Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the Air force, air and space force of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. It was formed towards the end of the World War I, First World War on 1 April 1918, on the merger of t ...


Specifications (Vickers Windsor Type 447)


See also


References


Notes


Bibliography

* * Bridgman, Leonard, ed. ''Jane’s All The World’s Aircraft 1945-1946''. London: Samson Low, Marston & Company, Ltd., 1946. * Buttler, Tony. ''British Secret Projects: Fighters & Bombers 1935-1950''. Hinckley: Midland Publishing, 2004. * Goulding, James and Philip Moyes. ''RAF Bomber Command and its Aircraft, 1941-1945''. Shepperton, Surrey, UK: Ian Allan Ltd., 1978. . * Mason, Francis K. ''The British Bomber since 1914''. London: Putnam Aeronautical Books, 1994. . * Murray, Dr. Iain ''Bouncing-Bomb Man: The Science of Sir Barnes Wallis''. Haynes. . * Swanborough, Gordon. ''British Aircraft at War, 1939-1945''. Saint Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, UK: HPC Publishing, 1997. .


External links

{{Vickers aircraft 1940s British bomber aircraft Windsor Cancelled military aircraft projects of the United Kingdom Four-engined tractor aircraft Mid-wing aircraft Aircraft first flown in 1943 Four-engined piston aircraft Barnes Wallis Strategic bombers Aircraft with retractable conventional landing gear