Widebody VC-10

Would the engine power available at the time have allowed for a wide body VC-10 with a cabin diameter matching say today’s Boeing 767 on the VC-10 cabin length?

If so, is there a market at the time for such an aircraft?

Vickers prepared a number of schemes in 1964 utilising the basic VC10 structure in a number of interesting ways. “Vickers Aircraft since 1908” (Putnam) has copies of several drawings including two which had two VC10 fuselages and could accommodate 300 or 450 passengers (powered by either 4 or 6 RR Medway engines mounted at the rear between the two fuselages). Another 300-seater was a double-decker with two paired RR Conways beneath each wing and a low-set tailplane. A more recognisable double-decker would have been powered by three RB178-14 “aft fan gas generators” and would have accommodated 295 passengers. They also proposed a military transport with bulged nose section, area ruled fuselage and front loading doors beneath the cockpit.

Surely it would have effectively meant an entirely new design. The VC-10 was designed for a specific BOAC requirement for “hot and high” airports on the old Empire routes. The only way Vickers could get an efficient enough wing was to put the engines somewhere else.
The fact that BOAC then tried to get out of buying them is another matter…

Sounds like an Il-86 to me 😀

William

How about if you go for a podded underwing engine mounting, do you have the engine power to get an early A340?

The abortive BAC 311 of late 1960s vintage isn’t far off what you suggest, albeit a short/medium hauler. After a number of brochures, a mock-up interior and, I think, some tentative metal cutting, it fell victim to the incoming Conservative government of Ted Heath in 1970, unwilling to provide launch aid to the 311 while at the same time supporting the crisis-hit Rolls-Royce. Hawker Siddeley was hanging on in there with Airbus, too, and as negotiations for Britain’s entry into the EU were finally about to come to fruition, it may have been thought that backing the all-British 311 would sent out the wrong signal – even though HS was in Airbus purely as a commercial venture.
How successful the 311 would have been is open to question. It’s worth noting that no rear-engined widebody has ever some to fruition – the general wisdom is that the trade-off between wing and rear mounted engines seems to favour smaller planes, and maybe the 311 would have been horribly overweight.
Even the Soviets, with a philosophy of installing sufficient thrust to meet performance targets regardless of fuel economy, never went down this road.
Maybe someone could jog my memory, but I do seem to remember a rather outlandish impression doing the rounds of a long-haul BAC widebody round about that time which had an interesting approach to the problem of fitting four RB211/JT9D-type engines at the rear. Died the death, thankfully.

William

if Vickers had enough money or the government showed some intrest then maybe, but us brits thought Boeing was the king….. still do…. :rolleyes: