Vickers Wellington
The
Vickers Wellington was a twin-engine,
medium bomber designed in the mid-1930s at
Brooklands in
Weybridge, Surrey, by
Vickers-Armstrongs' Chief Designer, R.K. Pierson. It was widely used in the first two years of
World War II, before being replaced as a bomber by much larger four-engine designs like the
Avro Lancaster. The Wellington was popularly known as 'the Wimpy' by service personnel, after
J. Wellington Wimpy from the
Popeye cartoons.
|
Vickers Wellington B Mk IA |
The Wellington used a unique
geodetic construction designed by the famous
Barnes Wallis for
airships and used to build the single-engined
Vickers Wellesley bomber. The fuselage was built up from a number of
steel channel-beams that were formed into a large network. This gave the plane tremendous strength because any one of the stringers could support some of the weight from even the opposite side of the plane. Blowing out one side's beams would still leave the plane as a whole intact. Wellingtons with huge holes cut out of them continued to return home when other planes would not have survived.
However, the construction system also had a distinct disadvantage, in that it took considerably longer to complete a Wellington than for other designs using
monocoque construction techniques. Nevertheless, in the late 1930s Vickers succeeded in building Wellingtons at a rate of one per day at Weybridge and 50 per month at
Chester. Peak wartime production in
1942 saw monthly rates of 70 achieved at Weybridge, 130 at Chester and 102 at
Blackpool.
The Wellington went through a total of sixteen variants during its production life plus a further two training conversions after the war. The prototype serial K4049 designed to satisfy a ministry specification B.9/32, first flew as a
Type 271 from Brooklands on
15 June 1936 with J.Summers as pilot, initially the type was named Crecy. After many changes to the design, it was accepted on
15 August 1936 for production with the name Wellington. The first model was the
Wellington Mk I, powered a pair of 1,050 hp (780 kW)
Bristol Pegasus engines, of which 180 were built, 150 for the
Royal Air Force and 30 for the
Royal New Zealand Air Force. The Mk I first entered service with
No. 9 Squadron RAF in October
1938. Improvements to the turrets resulted in 183
Mk IA Wellingtons and this complement of aircraft equipped the
RAF Bomber Command heavy bomber squadrons at the outbreak of war. The Wellington was out-numbered by its twin-engined contemporaries, the
Handley Page Hampden and the
Armstrong Whitworth Whitley, but would ultimately outlast them in productive service. The first RAF bombing attack of the war was made by Wellingtons of No. 9 and
No. 149 Squadrons, along with
Bristol Blenheims, on German shipping at
Brunsbüttel on
September 4,
1939. During this raid, the two Wellingtons became the first aircraft shot down on the Western Front. Wellingtons also participated in the first night raid on
Berlin on
25 August 1940. In the first 1000-aircraft raid on
Cologne, on
May 30,
1942, 599 out of 1046 aircraft were Wellingtons (101 of them were flown by Polish aircrew).
With Bomber Command Wellingtons flew 47,409 operations, dropped 41,823 tons of bombs and lost 1,332 aircraft in action.
In 1944, Wellingtons of Coastal Command were deployed to Greece, and performed various support duties during the RAF involvement in the
Greek Civil War. A few Wellingtons were operated by the
Hellenic Air Force.
The first main production variant was the
Mk IC which added waist guns to the Mk IA and a total of 2,685 were produced. The Mk IC had a crew of six; a pilot, radio operator, navigator/bomb aimer, observer/nose gunner, tail gunner and waist gunner. The
B Mk II was identical with the exception of the powerplant; utilising the 1,145 hp (855 kW)
Rolls-Royce Merlin X engine instead—400 were produced at Weybridge.
The next significant variant was the
B Mk III which featured the 1,375 hp (1,205 kW)
Bristol Hercules III or XI engine and a four-gun tail turret, instead of two-gun. A total of 1,519 Mk IIIs were built and became mainstays of Bomber Command through
1941. The 220
B Mk IV Wellingtons used the 1,200 hp (895 kW)
Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp engine and were flown by two
Polish squadrons.
There followed a number of experimental and conversion variants:
*
Type 298 Wellington Mk II One prototype only, powered by two 854-kW (1,145-hp) Rolls-Royce Merlin piston engines.
*
Type 299 Wellington Mk III Two prototypes only.
*
Type 410 Wellington Mk IV One prototype only, powered by two Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp radial piston engines.
*
Type 424 and
Type 421 Wellington Mk V Three were built, designed for pressurised, high-altitude operations using
turbocharged Hercules VIII engines.
*
Type 432 Wellington Mk VI One high-altitude prototype only.
*
B Mk VI Pressurised with a long wingspan and 1,600 hp (1,190 kW) Merlin R6SM engines, 63 were produced and were operated by
109 Squadron and as
Gee radio navigation trainers.
*
Type 449 Wellington Mk VIG Two production aircraft only.
*
Mk VII Single aircraft, built as a test-bed for the 40 mm
Vickers S machine gun turret.
*
GR Mk VIII Mk IC conversion for
Coastal Command service. Roles included reconnaissance, anti-submarine and anti-shipping attack. Included the
D.W.1 which was equipped with
degaussing hoops for detonating floating
magnetic mines. A Coastal Command Wimpy was the first aircraft to be fitted with the anti-submarine
Leigh light*
Mk IX One Mk IC conversion for troop transport.
*
Type 454 and
Type 459 Wellington Mk IX The Type 454 and Type 459 are prototypes with ASV.Mk II, ASV.Mk III radars, and powered by two Bristol Hercules VI and XVI radial piston engines.
The most widely produced variant was the
B Mk X of which 3,804 were built. It was similar to the Mk III except for the 1,675 hp (1,250 kW) Hercules VI or XVI powerplant and a fuselage structure of light alloy, instead of steel. The Mk X was the basis for a number of
Coastal Command conversions; the
GR Mk XII was a maritime version armed with
torpedoes and with a chin radome housing the ASV Mk III
radar - in the nose it had only one machinegun. The
GR Mk XI and
GR Mk XIII were another maritime variants with an ordinary nose turret and mast radar ASV Mk II instead of chin radome; these variants had no waist guns. The
GR Mk XIV restored the radome and added
RP-3 explosive
rocket rails to the wings.
Finally there was the
C Mk XV and
C Mk XVI which were unarmed conversions of the Mk IC for transport service. Two trainer models were also built or converted; the
T.10 and the
T.19, the latter for navigation training. The Wellington remained in use as a trainer until
1953.
While the Wellington was superseded in the
European Theatre, it remained in operational service for much of the war in the
Middle East and
Far East theatres. It was particularly effective in
North Africa, where it could fly faster than most of the
Italian fighter aircraft, and carried a heavier bomb load than the Italians.
The number of Wellingtons built totalled 11,461 of all versions.
* Australia, Canada, Czechoslovakia, France, New Zealand, Poland, United Kingdom, South Africa
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Wellington 1A Serial Number N2980 on display at Brooklands |
Only two Vickers Wellingtons survive, both in the United Kingdom:
*Wellington 1A Serial Number N2980 is on display at the Brooklands Museum of Motor Sport and Aviation at
Brooklands, Surrey - recovered from the bottom of Loch Ness, Scotland in 1985.
*Wellington T10 Serial Number MF628 is on display at the
Royal Air Force Museum, London - the last Wellington built (completed in the Autumn of 1945).
*
Example of durability of Vickers Wellington
