Vickers Type 207

The Vickers Type 207, often known as the Vickers M.1/30, was a single-engined two-seat biplane built as a shipborne torpedo bomber to an Air Ministry specification of the early 1930s, to replace the Blackburn Ripon. Its competitors were the Blackburn M.1/30 and the Handley Page H.P.46. It used an 825 hp Rolls-Royce Buzzard liquid-cooled V-12, a single-bay biplane layout with Handley Page slots and Frise ailerons, folding wings and an arrestor hook. Its main novelty was structural: Barnes Wallis, newly appointed chief structural engineer for Vickers aircraft, brought duralumin construction methods from his airship work to both wings and fuselage. The Type 207 first flew on 11 January 1933 with Mutt Summers at the controls. It was lost on 23 November 1933 in its first fast diving test when a tailplane failure started a structural breakup, though the crew survived. None of the M.1/30 entrants received an order, and only one Type 207 was built.