Vickers 131 Valiant

The Vickers Type 131 Valiant was a British general-purpose biplane produced by Vickers in 1927 to replace the Royal Air Force's Airco DH.9A. Vickers had found the wooden wings of its Vixen biplane vulnerable to temperature and humidity, so it designed metal wings for the Vixen, which became the Vivid, and in parallel an all-metal single-bay biplane, the Type 131. The Air Ministry's Specification 26/27 required reuse of DH.9A components, which the Type 131 did not offer, so Vickers built one prototype as a private venture. Powered by a 492 hp Bristol Jupiter, it carried a pilot and observer in adjacent cockpits and up to 500 lb of bombs. It had flown by 5 March 1927 and handled well in trials against designs from Bristol, Fairey, Gloster and Westland, but the Westland Wapiti won because the Valiant cost 30 percent more and was not a stable enough bombing platform. The single prototype was sold to Chile in 1928 and was destroyed in a crash on 29 March 1929.