Vickers Venture

The Vickers Type 94 Venture was a British army cooperation biplane of the 1920s, designed and built by Vickers as a development of the Vixen. It was built to Air Ministry Specification 45/23, and six aircraft were ordered. Like the Vixen it was a single-bay biplane with a steel tube fuselage and wooden wings, combining the wings of the Vixen II with the lengthened fuselage of the Vixen III. The first Venture flew at the Vickers factory at Brooklands on 3 June 1924 and went to Martlesham Heath for evaluation. Its handling was called docile, but testing showed poor longitudinal stability and a long landing run, and it was judged too large for army cooperation work from small airstrips. After brief service trials with No. 4 Squadron the six Ventures were relegated to experimental work, and the last was struck off charge in January 1933.