Avro
4 types · 16 airframes
Pre-1950 Narrative
Avro was founded in 1910 by Alliott Verdon Roe at the Brownsfield Mill on Great Ancoats Street in Manchester. One of the world's first aircraft builders, A.V. Roe and Company was established on 1 January 1910 at Brownsfield Mill, Great Ancoats Street, Manchester, by Alliott Verdon Roe and his brother Humphrey Verdon Roe. Humphrey's contribution was chiefly financial and organizational; funding it from the earnings of the family webbing business and acting as managing director until he joined the RFC in 1917. The railway arch where A.V. Roe in 1909 built and achieved the first all-British powered flight still stands in the Lee Valley Park on the Walthamstow Marshes. In 1911, Roy Chadwick began work as Alliott's personal assistant and the firm's draughtsman and, in 1918, he was appointed Chief Designer. The first Avro aircraft to be produced in any quantity was the Avro E or Avro 500, first flown in March 1912, of which 18 were manufactured, most for the newly formed Royal Flying Corps.
Aircraft Types
Avro Lancaster
The Avro Lancaster was a British four-engined heavy bomber of the Second World War. Developed by Avro from the twin-engined Manchester, whose engines had proved unreliable, it first flew in January 1941 and became the Royal Air Force's principal heavy bomber, carrying the largest bombs in the RAF's wartime inventory and flying the celebrated dams raid of May 1943. Some 7,377 were built in Britain and Canada. After the war the type served on in reconnaissance and maritime roles, in Canada into the 1960s, and two aircraft remain airworthy today.
Avro Tudor
The Avro Tudor was a British four-engined airliner developed from Avro's Lincoln bomber, and Britain's first pressurised airliner. Designed under the Brabazon Committee's postwar programme for the North Atlantic route, it needed two years of stability work before BOAC rejected it in 1947. British South American Airways flew the lengthened Tudor IV, but Star Tiger and Star Ariel disappeared over the Atlantic in 1948 and 1949 and were never found. Tudor 5s served as fuel tankers in the Berlin Airlift, and converted freighters worked on into the 1950s. Only thirty-eight were completed, split across seven marks, and the type was retired in 1959.
Avro Vulcan
The Avro Vulcan was a British delta-wing strategic bomber, operated by the Royal Air Force from 1956 to 1984 as part of the V-force nuclear deterrent. First flown on 30 August 1952, it was built in two main versions, the B.1 and the larger B.2, and 134 production aircraft were completed. After the deterrent passed to the Royal Navy in 1969 it served as a conventional bomber, and in 1982 flew the Black Buck raids against Argentine positions in the Falkland Islands. One aircraft, XH558, returned to flight in civilian hands in 2007 and flew displays until 2015.
Avro York
The Avro York was a British four-engined transport aircraft built by Avro during the Second World War from the Lancaster bomber, whose wings, tail, undercarriage and Merlin engines it kept behind a new square-section fuselage of double the capacity. First flown in July 1942, it served RAF Transport Command, which took 208 Yorks, and civil operators led by BOAC and British South American Airways, which took 45 civil York Is; RAF Yorks flew over 58,000 sorties in the Berlin Airlift of 1948–49. The last examples were retired in 1964, and two complete Yorks are displayed in British museums.