Vickers Windsor

History of Vickers Windsor

With the exception of the 1939 Warwick, the Vickers Group failed to generate any other heavy bomber designs of RAF interest during World War II (1939-1945). In search of a successor to the "Wellington" medium bomber family, the company's engineers began working to meet Air Force specification B.11/41, which was intended as a twin-engine high-speed medium bomber.

However, the design did not live up to expectations, so a four-engine form was conceived and used the same "geodesic" construction practice as previous Vickers large aircraft - using the process of "baskets" covered in fabric The woven substructure is designed to create a light yet sturdy body.

Meanwhile, the company's engineers are trying to create a Wellington bomber with pressurized cabin space for aircrews operating at heights, a feature the Air Ministry authorities are pushing for existing Warwick bombers . In addition to this, there is a new elliptical wing main aircraft, now with two engines each - a total of 4 x Rolls-Royce "Merlins" - and the project goal is to be a heavy bomber capable of maximum take-off weight (MTOW) 55,500 lbs and capable of a war load of 8 x 1,000 lb conventionally dropped bombs, a service ceiling of nearly 43,000 feet and a top speed of 350 miles per hour.

Specification B. 5/41 covered both prototypes, and work on the airframe continued until the end of 1942. At the time, the original Wellington successor design was included in the program under Specification B. 3/42, a commitment that eventually established the "Windsor" (Type 447) heavy high-altitude bomber - recognized as the "Windsor B. The first aircraft form of the Mk I".

For high altitude missions, the cabin space must be pressurized. The aircraft will be of considerable size for the required operating altitude, range and bomb load. The main aircraft is mounted along the shoulders on both sides of the fuselage, with a deep fuselage profile and a stepped cockpit. The empennage contains a vertical tail with a low-mounted horizontal plane, each wing main plane manages a pair of Rolls-Royce engines to provide the required power. The internal geodesic structure is also carried over to the wing, so no spars are needed to support the long-span structure - although the process is complex and requires fine-tuning (a special composite fabric also had to be designed to cope with the speed becoming).

Play). These structures also had a pronounced underside when the aircraft was stationary and arched upwards when the bomber was in flight, further complicating the aircraft construction and skinning process).

Unique to the landing gear is that each nacelle has a wheeled main leg, and the tail of the aircraft is supported by a conventional tail wheel. This presents a challenge for pilots walking on narrow runways.

The original 1942 defensive armament consisted of 2 x 7.7mm machine guns mounted on the nose forward fixed bracket and 2 x 20mm machine guns mounted on the rear turret. In 1943, the aft turrets were eliminated and replaced by a pair of remote-controlled turrets, each armed with 2 x 20mm guns, now mounted aft of the outboard engine nacelles.

Hip gun positions were added in April 1944 to further expand the defense network to protect aircraft.

Ultimately, a total of three Windsor prototypes were built and completed. The first flight on October 23, 1943 was the unarmed DW506 (Type 447) using Rolls-Royce Merlin 65 series engines, each producing 1,315 hp, on the test stand.

Subsequent testing resulted in a solidly large aircraft with good bomber characteristics, although the design was far from complete and ready for mass production, flying under its weight with little mission equipment. The DW506 was eventually scrapped after a forced landing on March 2, 1944 - the bomber skidded off the runway with major fuselage damage beyond repair.

On 10 February 1944, the prototype DW512 (Type 457) took off for the first time and contained some mission critical hardware, although it still lacked defensive artillery equipment. The model was powered by 1,635 hp each of the Rolls-Royce Merlin 85 Series engines (driving the four-bladed propellers), and was better suited to expected production form than its predecessor.

Testing of the product soon revealed the swelling effect of the special fabric skin (a defect first identified on the prototype DW506), so a new skin formulation was developed and applied.

The third prototype was the NK136 (Type 461), which was powered by the same engine as the DW512, but had the expected 4 x 20mm gun armament kit on its RC nacelle mounted turret barbs. The aircraft's maiden flight took place on July 11, 1944, and artillery testing continued until the end of the European War in June 1945.

After the war was completely over in September 1945 (Japan surrendered in the Pacific), the Windsor program was discontinued in November as its needs were no longer apparent. The development of the Avro Lancaster heavy bomber also contributed to the notion that the Windsor would end up being a bloated, expensive, large aircraft, and that the war-tested Lancaster would be capable of basically any mission role assigned to it.

The three test aircraft planned for Windsor have completed more than 130 flights. Modifications and recommendations were made throughout the test life cycle, including modified landing gear, various engine tweaks, a proposed "combination" (jet/prop) engine hybrid, and a modified engine closer to the competitive Lancaster Head, although none of these are implemented. None of this mattered in the context of the war, where the RAF's preferred heavy bomber after WWII became the Avro Lincoln (described in detail elsewhere on this site).

The surviving Windsor airframes were all scrapped by 1950.

Specification

Basic

Production

Roles

Dimensions

Weight

Performance

Performance

Armor

Changes