Vickers Supermarine Type 179 flying boat

I know it’s way past time to reply to this thread, but I just got here. The issue of why the Supermarine Type 179 6 engined RR Buzzard powered aircraft was abandoned in 1932 should be discernible to anyone who remembers the history of the UK and the World economy at that time. The World was in the midst of a fearsome depression, and the UK had been suffering through the post Great War period due to the vast cost of the War, and the ridiculous idea that Germany would pay everyone for it. John Maynard Keynes eventually left the Paris Peace Conference having told the British and the French and everyone else that there was no money for the Reparations they wanted, and that the world economy was in a very fragile state. No one likes a kill-joy at a party which is what, having read Margaret MacMillan’s Paris 1919, the Peace Conference was, a chance for various governments and their ministers to have a ripping time in Paris, and to fantasize about what they were going to do with all that imaginary Reparations money. It is a very sad and rather depressing reflection on the wilful blindness of political and civil service figures.

I gather the Buzzard, despite giving rise to the R engine of the Supermarine S6 and S6B, was a very unsuccessful engine. Whether it was that it never found the right aircraft to employ it (which seems odd if it were reliable) or simply that it was in need of further development as was the case when a junior version became the Merlin, and the full 27 litre engine was re-worked to emerge 10 years later as the Griffon is beyond our ability to know at this late stage.

I don’t think it’s a particularly pretty plane, influence of the Dornier Do-X is apparent.

Check your PM

What do you want to know specifically? There’s a chapter on it in the Putnam Supermarine Aircraft since 1914. Looks like the main fuselage was built before it was cancelled. There’s a photo of it, looks like a real monster.

Expected performance figures, engine type etc really – from the picture, does it look ‘right’ or does it look like a dog?

What do you want to know specifically? There’s a chapter on it in the Putnam Supermarine Aircraft since 1914. Looks like the main fuselage was built before it was cancelled. There’s a photo of it, looks like a real monster.