The record-breaking Vickers Vimy, which in 1919 made the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic, was designed as a new generation heavy bomber for the Royal Air Force and was intended to attack German targets at the height of the First World War. Designed by Reginald Kirshaw Pierson, the Vimy was manufactured at the Vickers Company factory in Leighton Buzzard but failed to see active service during the War. However, its place in history was guaranteed with a number of historic pioneering flights.
In 1913, the London Daily Mail offered a £10,000 prize for the first successful non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. By the end of the First World War, despite numerous attempts the prize remained unclaimed. However, on 14 June 1919, a Vickers Vimy Mk.IV flown by two Royal Air Force officers, pilot Captain John Alcock and navigator Lieutenant Arthur Whitten-Brown, took off from St John’s, Newfoundland, and headed across the Atlantic towards Europe.
They flew through the night battling against snow, ice, fog and fatigue. The Vimy flew between sea level and 12,000 feet at an average speed of 118 miles per hour and the following morning the two aviators sighted the wireless station at Clifden, Ireland. While attempting to land, the Vimy nosed over in a bog and was badly damaged, although neither Alcock nor Brown was injured. The pair had flown 1,900 miles in around 16 hours, and won the Daily Mail prize. The Vimy was rescued and restored and is now in the Science Museum in London.
That same year, the Commonwealth Government of Australia offered a £10,000 prize to the first all-Australian crew to fly an aeroplane from England to Australia in less than 720 hours. Brothers Keith and Ross Macpherson Smith along with two mechanics took up the challenge. The Macpherson brothers began their epic flight in a Vickers Vimy, G-EAOU leaving Hounslow, west London, on 12 November 1919 and arriving in Darwin on 10 December 1919. The flight distance was estimated at 17,911 kilometres with a total flying time of 135 hours and 55 minutes. The brothers were knighted and the company presented the aircraft to the Australian Government.
In 1920, two South Africans, Lieutenant Colonel Pierre van Ryneveld and Major Christopher Quintin-Brand attempted to make the first flight from England to South Africa. They left Brooklands on 4th February in a Vickers Vimy, G-UABA, named Silver Queen. As they flew to Wadi Halfain in the Sudan their aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing. A second Vimy – the Silver Queen 11 - was loaned to them by the Royal Air force at Heliopolis in Egypt. This second aircraft reached Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia, where it failed to take-off and was badly damaged. The two pilots then borrowed an Airco D.H.9 aircraft to complete their journey to Cape Town. Following the flight Ryneveld and Brand were both knighted and van Ryneveld went on to establish the South African Air Force.
The Vickers Vimy formed the RAF’s main heavy bomber force for most of the 1920’s until it was replaced by the Vickers Virginia. The type was finally withdrawn from service in 1933.
In recent years, two Vimy replicas have been built. The first, developed by the Heritage Aircraft Flying Association at Brooklands, made many appearances around the UK and also visited the Paris Air Show, before its retirement. It is now on permanent exhibition at the RAF Museum at Hendon. The second replica was built in 1994 by an American/Australian team led by Lang Kidby and Peter Macmillan. In 1994, the aircraft flew from England to Australia, in 2000 England to South Africa and in 2005 they recreated Alcock and Brown’s epic 1919 Atlantic crossing. This replica Vimy is still flying and can be seen at events around the UK.
