Vickers Viscount
The Vickers Viscount is a British four-engined turboprop airliner built by Vickers-Armstrongs, and the first turboprop airliner to enter service. Developed from the Brabazon Committee's postwar Type IIB requirement, the Type 630 prototype first flew on 16 July 1948, and British European Airways opened the first scheduled turboprop services on 18 April 1953. Production ran from 1948 to 1964 across three basic versions — the Type 700, the lengthened Type 800 and the longer-range Type 810 — and the type sold widely abroad, above all in North America. The sources disagree on the final total: Wikipedia gives 445 built, while the Vickers Viscount Network's construction-number list counts 444.
Why It Mattered
The Viscount was the first production airliner powered by turboprop engines, and the Canada Aviation and Space Museum credits it with breaking the piston engine's monopoly on air transport. No turboprop had flown a regular airline service before it. Vickers had argued for turbine power when the Brabazon Committee framed Britain's postwar airliner requirements, and in April 1945 the company was selected to develop the turboprop Type IIB. Passengers felt the change at once: a pressurised cabin, much less vibration and noise than piston airliners gave, and large panoramic windows. The type went on to be flown by close to fifty airlines around the world, and it became the first British airliner used by a North American airline.
Design Notes
Chief designer Rex Pierson and his staff completed the Type 630 design at Brooklands in 1945: a 32-seat airliner built around four Rolls-Royce Dart turboprops. The need to pressurise the cabin settled the fuselage's shape, ending the double-bubble and elliptical schemes, and the type's signature windows were huge ellipses of 19 by 26 inches. Every production Viscount was Dart-powered, and Rolls-Royce grew the engine from an initial 800 hp to the 1,890 hp RDa.7 Mk 520 that Brooklands Museum records for its Type 806. After Pierson's death in 1948, George Edwards took charge of the project, and the design grew into the production Type 700, seating up to 53 in some layouts. Three basic versions followed: the Type 700, the Type 800 with its fuselage lengthened by 3 ft 10 in, and the Type 810, which used greater power to fly faster and farther than the 800.
Operational History
The Type 630 prototype, registered G-AHRF, first flew from Wisley's grass airfield on 16 July 1948, with Vickers' chief test pilot Joseph "Mutt" Summers in command. Two years later, during trial service with BEA, its 29 July 1950 flight from Northolt to Paris with 14 paying passengers became the first scheduled airline flight by any turbine-powered aircraft. The stretched Type 700 prototype, G-AMAV, took off from Brooklands for its first flight on 28 August 1950, and BEA ordered twenty of the type that month. Regular passenger services began on 18 April 1953, the world's first scheduled turboprop airline service. Orders climbed quickly: the book stood at ninety by the end of 1953 and 160 a year later, and in 1957 the line was turning out a Viscount every three days. Counting by series, Wikipedia gives 287 Type 700s, 67 Type 800s and 84 Type 810s. Its overall total is 445 built between 1948 and 1963, a figure Vintage Aviation News repeats; the Vickers Viscount Network's construction-number list instead counts 444 aircraft from 459 numbers issued. North America was the great export success: Trans-Canada Air Lines ordered 51 Viscounts and had all 51 in service by 1958, and eighty percent of production went to export customers. The last aircraft built were six for China's CAAC, delivered in 1964.
Afterlife
Front-line airlines replaced their Viscounts with jets — South African Airways took Boeing 727s from 1965 as its chosen replacement — and many aircraft were refurbished for new service with African operators, second-hand sales continuing into the 1990s. British World Airlines flew the last Viscount passenger service in Britain on 18 April 1996. The last airworthy Viscount, flown by Global Airways in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is believed to have been flown last in January 2009. The design also lived on in enlarged form as the Vickers Vanguard. Survivors are numerous: the Vickers Viscount Network counts 59 surviving as complete airframes or major components across 24 countries, and Vintage Aviation News counts more than two dozen preserved on static display in museums. Among them are G-APIM, one of the last Viscounts built at Brooklands, at Brooklands Museum, and Trans-Canada's CF-THI, which Air Canada donated to the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in 1969.