Vickers Wibault

The Vickers Type 121 Wibault Scout, known in the queue and on Wikipedia as the Vickers Wibault, was a British single-seat fighter built by Vickers in the 1920s as a licensed version of the French Wibault 7. Vickers had set up a partnership with the Societe des Avions Michel Wibault to exploit Michel Wibault's patented all-metal construction, which used corrugated light alloy skin panels for easy maintenance and inspection. Vickers bought one Wibault 7, re-engined it with a Bristol Jupiter VI radial and used it as the prototype for licensed production. Both the French original and the Vickers copy were single-engine high-wing parasol monoplanes. The Chilean Military Air Service evaluated the prototype and ordered 26 aircraft, delivered between November 1926 and October 1927. The first Vickers-built aircraft flew at the end of June 1926 but crashed after an inverted spin on its first flight, a centre of gravity problem that was cured by modifying the tailplane. The type served with the Chilean Air Force until 1934.