Vickers Venom

The Vickers Type 279 Venom was a British low-wing monoplane, single-seat, single-engined, eight-gun fighter intended for use in the tropics. It was fast and manoeuvrable but its Bristol Aquila radial engine was disliked. It was designed to Air Ministry specification F.5/34, which called for a single-seat eight-gun fighter with the speed and rate of climb needed to catch 200 mph bombers flying at 15,000 feet, with a radial engine for tropical performance. Vickers based it on the earlier Type 151 Jockey, with the same wing and tail sections and dimensions but a modern smooth stressed-skin structure in place of the Jockey's ribbed construction; it was originally called the Jockey Mark II. It had a 625 hp Bristol Aquila sleeve-valve radial, hinged for easy maintenance, and unlike the Hurricane and Spitfire carried its full armament of eight Browning machine guns from its first flight. Joseph Mutt Summers flew it on 17 June 1936. It and the other F.5/34 designs were rejected by the Air Ministry in favour of Rolls-Royce Merlin designs.