Vickers Warwick
The Warwick was a twin-engined aircraft built by Vickers-Armstrongs to Specification B.1/35 as a heavy bomber, and intended as the larger counterpart of the Wellington. Its development was delayed for years by the lack of suitable engines — the Rolls-Royce Vulture proved unreliable — and production aircraft mostly used the American Pratt & Whitney Double Wasp. The type entered production in 1942, but only sixteen were completed as bombers, four-engined types having taken that role. The rest served as Coastal Command air-sea rescue and general reconnaissance aircraft and as transports with Transport Command and BOAC, and the type was out of service by the end of 1946.
Why It Mattered
The Warwick began as Vickers-Armstrongs' answer to Specification B.1/35, the Air Ministry requirement for a twin-engined heavy strategic bomber. Vickers designed it alongside the smaller Wellington, whose larger counterpart it was meant to be. Development dragged on for want of a suitable engine, and by the time adequate engines were available the design was obsolete in its intended role. Of the Warwicks ordered as bombers, only sixteen were ever completed in that form. The type's real work lay elsewhere: air-sea rescue and maritime reconnaissance for Coastal Command, and transport flying for Transport Command. In the rescue role, carrying an airborne lifeboat to drop beside ditched crews, Warwicks were credited with saving airmen from many different aircraft types in the Channel and the North Sea.
Design Notes
The Warwick used Barnes Wallis's geodetic airframe construction, first used on the Wellesley: a lattice of intersecting duralumin members with fabric wired over it. Spreading loads through the whole lattice gave the structure great redundancy when damaged, at the price of complicated construction. The first prototype flew from Brooklands on Rolls-Royce Vulture engines, but the Vulture was unreliable, and unlikely ever to be available in the numbers the Warwick needed. The second prototype flew in April 1940 on Bristol Centaurus radials, but that engine was itself still at an early stage of development. Production Warwicks mostly settled for the American Pratt & Whitney Double Wasp, which became the type's usual powerplant. Handling was the lasting flaw, worst when flying on one engine; only on the GR Mk V did a dorsal fin finally address the directional instability that had plagued the type throughout its career.
Operational History
The first prototype made its maiden flight on 13 August 1939. Production started in 1942, but the bomber order largely evaporated: of the 150 Mk Is ordered as bombers, only sixteen were completed, as Bomber Command was re-equipping solely with a new generation of four-engined heavies. In January 1943 the Air Staff settled the question, deciding the Warwick would serve chiefly as a transport and air-sea rescue aircraft. Fourteen were finished as C Mk I transports for BOAC's Mediterranean and North African routes; BOAC flew them briefly in the Middle East before they returned to RAF Transport Command in 1944. A hundred C Mk IIIs followed for the RAF, entering service with 525 Squadron in June 1944; the Imperial War Museum holds an official photograph of a C Mk III of No. 167 Squadron at Blackbushe. From 1943, Coastal Command Warwicks went to sea with the 1,700 lb Mk IA airborne lifeboat beneath the fuselage: a powered boat designed by yachtsman Uffa Fox, dropped by parachute from about 700 feet beside crews who had ditched. Warwicks were credited with rescuing the crews of a wide variety of contemporary aircraft that had come down in the English Channel and the North Sea. The general reconnaissance versions saw little action by comparison: only a handful were ever used in combat. The GR Mk V reached No. 179 Squadron at St Eval early in 1945, and the mark was also flown by Nos. 17 and 27 Squadrons of the South African Air Force. By the time production finished, 845 Warwicks had been built.
Afterlife
Retirement came quickly after the war: the C Mk III transports, which had served mainly in the Mediterranean — plans to operate the type in the Far East having been abandoned because its fabric skinning was vulnerable to heat and humidity — had been withdrawn by March 1946. Many GR Mk Vs never entered service at all: most of the aircraft completed from the order for 525 of the mark went directly into storage in 1944. One relic is recorded: a propeller blade from a GR Mk V that suffered an engine failure on take-off in January 1945, and force-landed near Byfleet, survives in the Brooklands Museum collection.