Vickers Valetta/Viking vs C-47/DC-3

The wing in plan view appears to be ex Wellington/Warwick and the only change is that it’s gained a metal skin.

With all due respect to Vickers, it seems like a silly thing to do.
If you’re going to make a commercial aircraft, it should be reasonably modern for better performance and economics…

I don’t think that Vickers would have disagreed with you on that, but I think that it was more a case of getting back into producing airliners as soon as possible. And as the information seems to show, they did manage to improve a bit over the DC-3/C-47 which was going to be its main competitor. Designing a completely new wing takes time, and they must have decided to avoid that delay by using a known wing design.

And the Valentia features large here

http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?96549-Old-Photographs-of-RAF-Vickers-Valentia-s-in-Middle-East-circa-1930-s

Moggy

Age difference was mitigated by its Wellington derivation.

With all due respect to Vickers, it seems like a silly thing to do.
If you’re going to make a commercial aircraft, it should be reasonably modern for better performance and economics (which is the name of the game in airliners…people always ask here “What’s the best airliner…the answer: The one that makes money for its owners). While it probably saved money in R&D and build costs, you can’t sell an airliner on cost alone.

True, Douglas used the DC-4 wing throughout the production span of the 4-6-7 series (1941-58), but it always was modern and had growth potential.

Valletta rather than Valentia?

The Valetta was the military version of the Viking. Hope that removes the confusion. I recall both DC-3 and Viking in BEA livery at Heathrow in the 50’s.

It seems that the product planners decided on an aircraft with similar performance to the DC-3 but more expensive (because of used ones coming onto the market) and with more powerful but
thirstier and (arguably) more unreliable engines. It’s a wonder they sold any!

Somewhere over France I took myself off to the bog, and was delighted to find it had a window low down through which I could watch the fields of France pass by whilst sitting (behave) comfortably.

Vc10 had a little window too, we often used to think why? Who the feck is going to look in at 20 odd thousand feet

Age difference was mitigated by its Wellington derivation: both types’ wings were of 1932 design. Make work, certainly: Valetta/Varsity were funded precisely to sustain Vickers’ aero-production competence while they developed (to be) Valiant and Swift. The 1946 Lend/Lease settlement, as part of the US Reconstruction Loan, included clear UK title to 72xC-47 bought for civil use, and 600 retained with RAF (Phil Butler, Air Arsenal,P.39): some of those, instead of being sold or scrapped, could have done the jobs of Valetta/Varsity, albeit with $ drain for support.

As a military freighter it was compromised by the spar in cabin…seems rather old fashioned post war. I was rather shocked when I inspected the Valetta at the Norfolk and Suffolk museum.
As a post-war passenger ship, seemed outdated compared to the Convairs and Martins but it was (I’d suspect) much less expensive. If it was faster than the Dakota, I’d hope so, considering its age difference.

I’ve always thought of them as make work for the UK industry and the need to replace lend lease Dakotas while keeping pounds in the UK.

I spoke about this exact subject to Harold Bamberg who set up Eagle Airways. The Dak was more adaptable, and easier to convert between pax and cargo, although Eagle did their own Viking cargo conversion. The Viking was faster and had longer range. It meant the Viking could reach more of the Mediterranean resorts in one hop and save on refuelling stops. More importantly the Viking spares were all easily source-able in the UK, some Dak spares were in short supply and needed to be paid for in US dollars. Eagle purchased almost the entire BEA fleet so they had no shortage of spares, but they still operated some Daks because they were better for short range cargo flights.

From ‘Britain’s Airlines volume 2’: “The Viking was significantly faster than the Dakota although it had slightly higher operating costs and needed longer runways. When the German charter airlines began taking to the sky in the mid-50s, over twenty Vikings were used, their higher speed proving a real benefit on the longer sectors to Spain and the Balearics.”

My main memory on the Viking was a trip down to Perpignan (I forget where from) on a charter flight in an aircraft that had at one time been part of The Queen’s Flight. I guess this would be about 1964 or 65?

Somewhere over France I took myself off to the bog, and was delighted to find it had a window low down through which I could watch the fields of France pass by whilst sitting (behave) comfortably.

It sort of amused me that I might be following in the wake of Bomber Command in jettisoning my load there.

😀

Moggy

CASA Azor; SAAB Scandia; Sud Bretagne; Brabazon Committee Type II Continental, Interim: VC1 Viking. Why, 1944/46, did we all bother?

Well, it took awhile to perceive what the DC-3 would prove to be: the reference standard, the sole aircraft named by Ike in his 5 “war-winning” products. C-46 appeared to be more flexible, pax and/or cargo. No-one anticipated US Govt. would offer C-47s in 1946 as is where is at $50,000 (then £12,000, plus bucketloads of spares to defer the day when support must be bought for full-fare $). So we all thought we could build and export Continentals. Even USSR, licence-building it, invested in expensive, overlapping Il.12.

It seemed a good idea to produce 1945 designs to replace a 1932 product. We all got it wrong.

Oh it’s not mine. Found it online.

Thanks for that Multirole! I was going to dig out my copy of Arthur Whitlock’s ‘Behind the Cockpit Door’ from which I copied the image that you’ve photographed. I supplied that copy to the Viking team at Brooklands sometime in 1999 or 2000. Good to see it again 😉

Edit: the image was originally posted by PeteP, on this thread in the CBFSim forums: http://www.cbfsim.co.uk/cbfs_bb/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=7830&start=10 in November 2006.

Ding dong!! Well, the memories come “flooding” back. Much appreciated, Multirole!!:highly_amused:

And to think I thought this is going to be an esoteric discussion on comparative specifications.

Charliehunt, does this take you back?

[ATTACH=CONFIG]229529[/ATTACH]

On the other hand, the seats near the spar were popular with male travellers on Vikings as there were some interesting views when the cabin crew clambered over the spar.

.

Well that’s an interesting observation on one of the key differences between the two. And one which I have no recollection of at the time – must have been too young!!:highly_amused:

A quick look at what the RAF used the Valletta for shows little difference between it and the Dakota. It carried the same number of paratroops, a similar amount of airdrop stores (both internally and externally) and both aircraft could tow a fully loaded Horsa glider. Unless there was a big difference in operational range / speed / altitude the only significant difference is that the Valletta / Viking provided more British jobs than an American built Dakota did.

On the Viking/Valetta you’ve got a wing spar running through the cabin which is not very handy when loading cargo. This is a major plus for the DC-3 design as that has a flat cabin floor. On the other hand, the seats near the spar were popular with male travellers on Vikings as there were some interesting views when the cabin crew clambered over the spar.

As mentioned before, the Viking design wasn’t built in the same numbers as the DC-3, I guess that there were just too many C-47s available second hand.