Shipbucket

It's certainly a pretty plane.
Do you know how the WG. 21 and WG. 22 did pitch control?

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Source Materiel is always welcome.

Honestly, I don't know what the designers at Westland were drinking in the late 60s but I want some...

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Oh good, my dog found the chainsaw!

Thiel, no I'm not sure. I assume they relied on the leading and trailing-edge flaps etc. but it is odd there is no other obvious kind of pitch control which would have been a major issue, especially in the pre-FBW era. The propellers would probably have been more akin to helicopter rotors than propellers and as many of you guys have pointed out, conventional landings were impossible/ difficult. Westland did major design work on tilt-engine propeller-VTOL designs so they must have worked out something. I suspect, like the Supersonic Rotor programme, much was never declassified into the public domain, even if the basic specs were released.

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

Because it's already sunday here in Poland, I guess it's time to post promised never-were VC.10's.

Of course all comments and suggestions are welcome, esp. from Members more knowledgeable on the subject, as I feel that there's a lot room for improvement here (mainly with military ones).

Rapid increase in popularity of air travel since the introduction of jet engine created a need for larger and larger airliners with ever increasing number of passenger seats. Significant effort was made by the Vickers' design team into creating higher-capacity "stretched" versions of their VC.10, which in turn proved to have a significant potential towards it, both thanks to certain features of the airframe (held also by contemporary DC-8, but not as much by B707 whose "stretching" potential was actually quite limited) and to excellent power ratings of it's engines created for the "hot and high" conditions often encountered in various corners of the British Empire.
First step in that direction was "Super VC.10" or Type 1150 - initially planned for capacity of 212 seats (compared to 151 on basic model), but eventually produced with capacity of up to 174 seats. Further designs followed, with planned capacity in 200-seat-range with minimum structural changes beyond the length increase itself. Notable among them was version created thanks to interest expressed by Pan American Airlines for their transatlantic and coast-to-coast services. Pan Am's Super VC.10 was to have a capacity for 196 passengers, additional fuel tanks in wingtips and in wing root extension fillets, and also of a small compartment on the lower deck that could be used either as passenger lounge (reminiscent of B377 Stratocruiser) or as crew rest area. Another major "stretched VC.10" was a "Short-Haul" version, created with such operators like BEA in mind, that traded long range for higher passenger capacity, called (as one of the earlier uses of the term) "Airbus-standard". It was characterized with smaller wingspan (around 6 meters less) and capacity of up to 230 seats.

Great Britain, Vickers VC.10-200


USA, Vickers VC.10-PanAm


Great Britain, Vickers VC.10 Short-Haul


"Stretching" of the VC.10's fuselage was relatively "conservative" line of development, but Vickers' engineers had also some more ambitious ideas that allowed a much larger increase of passenger capacity thanks to increased number of decks. First two of these - both created around 1964 - could be described as simultaneously odd and conservative: Vickers P.579 combined two Standard VC.10 fuselages into single airframe side-by-side and powered by four engines, giving it a capacity of 300 passengers. Vickers P.580 combined three Standard VC.10 fuselages, coupled with six engines, with planned capacity of 450 passengers. Not surprisingly, these were dropped quite quickly in favor of a VC.10 Superb, or Vickers Type 1180/1181 (designation difference referred mostly to some internal workings) of 1965, which had all-new, double decked, fuselage (with 8-shaped cross section) bit reminiscent of later B747 or A380, capacity of 265 passengers and planned entry into service in 1969.

Great Britain, Vickers P.579


Great Britain, Vickers P.580


Great Britain, Vickers VC.10 Superb


Another interesting civilian VC.10 designs were: F-4 Freighter with a swing nose (like the Supper Guppy transports), and a double-deck transporter with a hump in the style of Aviation Traders Carvair (or Jumbo Jet) and clamshell nose-door (but I could find only one blurry photograph of this one).

VC.10 was also planned to form basis for a variety of military roles including strategic bomber, maritime patrol, AEW and even giant interceptor. Unfortunately, however, I don't have the access to the most relevant literature (namely: Chris Gibson's "Vickers VC10, AEW, Pofflers and other unbuilt variants") so I did what I could with materials kindly sent to me by Hood and also found on Secretprojects (with few bits found elsewhere).

Great Britain, Vickers VC.10 AEW


Maritime VC.10 was designed in response to OR.357 request for an Shackleton replacement capable of transiting at 450 kts and searching at 180 kts for eight hours at 1000 nm from base while carrying 18.620 lb of stores. Quite wide variety of designs was presented, but ultimately the choice was narrowed to three designs - maritime VC.10, HS.800 based on Trident and HS.801 based on Comet. The VC.10 was considered too large, though, and OR.357 was replaced with modified request OR.381 that ultimately led to choice of HS.801 known from that point as Nimrod.

Great Britain, Vickers VC.10 MRA


A so-called "Poffler", the strategic bomber version of VC.10 was planned mainly as carrier of up to 8 (four pods with two missiles each) Skybolt ALBM's (or 4 Z.89 or 6 Bristol X.12 Pandora missiles). Cancellation of this project obviously killed "Poffler" as well. It should be noted, that Lance Cole in his VC.10's monograph (by Crowood Press) mentions that it was to be also capable of carrying instead eight panniers, each with eight 1000lb bombs inside, with an impressive total bombload of 64000lb (29056kg).

Great Britain, Vickers VC.10 Bomber (Poffler)

This is equal to the passenger capacity of an A330-300 or 767-300.
This is equal to the passenger capacity of a 777-300.

Needless to say aircraft design has come quite a bit of ways. Great drawings BTW.

Holy... dude, just...

Awesome pieces of work!

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Oh good, my dog found the chainsaw!

I second that and I must admit that the British aeronautic industry was really innovative.

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Je pardonne à tous ceux qui m'ont offensé... mais je garde la liste!


Worklist, FD scale submarines and ships :
- Project 971 "Akula" (80%)
- Project 705 "Alpha" (10%)
- Project 371 (70%)
- Project 1459 (30%)
- Projekt 151 Sassnitz (To be redone)

Great stuff eswube, wonderful additions to this amazing thread.

I think I just fainted with the awesomeness of these VC.10s!
If only those Super VC.10s had been built...

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English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

Thank You for comments!
I hoped to do several more planned versions, but unfortunately lack of sources prevented me from doing so. Maybe some other time.