Design and Development
The Varsity was developed by Vickers and based on the Viking and Valetta to meet Air Ministry Specification T.13/48 for a twin-engined training aircraft to replace the Wellington T10 and the Valetta T3 and T4. The main differences were the wider-span wings, longer fuselage and tricycle undercarriage; and a ventral pannier to allow a trainee bomb aimer to be in a prone position and a bomb bay with a capacity for 24 x 25lb smoke & flash bombs. The prototype Type 668 first flew from Wisley on 17 July 1949.
A civil version the VC.3 was planned but with the success of the VC.2 Viscount the idea was abandoned.
Read more about this topic: Vickers Varsity
Famous quotes containing the words design and/or development:
“I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.”
—John Adams (1735–1826)
“This was the Eastham famous of late years for its camp- meetings, held in a grove near by, to which thousands flock from all parts of the Bay. We conjectured that the reason for the perhaps unusual, if not unhealthful development of the religious sentiment here, was the fact that a large portion of the population are women whose husbands and sons are either abroad on the sea, or else drowned, and there is nobody but they and the ministers left behind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)