Vickers Vireo

The Vickers Vireo was an experimental low-wing all-metal monoplane built to explore all-metal service aircraft and the use of catapult-launched shipboard fighters. Only one was built. It was the first Vickers design to use the Vickers-Wibault construction method, based on the patents of Michel Wibault, in which an airframe built of simple non-machined shapes was covered with thin corrugated light alloy sheet, and it was built to Air Ministry specification 17/25. It was an angular single-engine monoplane with a flat-sided deep fuselage and an unbraced tapered wing carrying twin machine guns, powered by an uncowled 230 hp Armstrong Siddeley Lynx IV radial, and either wheels or floats could be fitted. Initial flights were in March 1928, followed a month later by Ministry tests at Martlesham Heath, where it showed a tendency to drop heavily at touchdown. By July it was aboard HMS Furious for deck landing trials, but Air Ministry interest in low-powered catapult fighters faded when it proved no faster than conventional shipboard aircraft.