Britain's Best Interwar Bomber (No, Really!) | Vickers Virginia 

F.A.Q Section - Ask your questions here :) Q: Do you take aircraft requests? A: I have a list of aircraft I plan to cover, but feel free to add to it with suggestions:) Q: How do you decide what aircraft gets covered next? A: Supporters over on Patreon now get to vote on upcoming topics such as overviews, special videos, and deep dives. Q: Why do you use imperial measurements for some videos, and metric for others? A: I do this based on country of manufacture. Imperial measurements for Britain and the U.S, metric for the rest of the world, but I include text in my videos that convert it for both.

Sounds weird, but it’s always a good day when you see an aircraft review for a plane you’ve never heard of

Imagine getting trained in a Virginia in '38 and just a five years later you fly in a Lancaster. Must've been a crazy upgrade.

VIRGINIA GUNNER: "Will I be serving aboard an aircraft, sir?" AIR MINISTRY: "You'll be serving in... the _vicinity_ of an aircraft, yes."

Given Chris's recent period of illness, I was really hoping this was going to be about the Vickers Vicks 'VapoRub' Mk II... "I love the smell of Menthol & Eucalyptus in the morning" - said no one, ever 😊

When Rex said "...to 1938" at the start, I thought I misheard him!

Nearly 2 decades of service for a plane during a time with such extremely rapid development, that is VERY impressive.

That tail gun position....When you consider it was a wood frame and the extra weight out on the very end of that narrow tail, that thing must have flexed up & down like a see-saw in flight.

The length of service has to be seen in the light of rebuilds it had. It was like owning an old broom which has had 2 new handles and 3 new heads over its service. The Virginia over its service was rebuilt several times. Lengthened, gunners added/removed, wings modified, old models metalized to the latest standard. Systems and upgrades in general.

We may not have had a catapult-launched Lancaster, but it was part of the design brief for the Manchester, and was tested!

Imagine you're in one of these in late 1937, early '38, say on a training flight over the North Sea, and a 109 goes by.

After almost 20'000 hours in the air my left ear is nearly deaf, down to about 5 %. And this is in closed cabin aircraft and headsets. But the noise on your left side from the wind will cause this eventually. I don't even want to imagine the disabilities these guys suffered past 40 from flying in open top aircraft.

I am currently scratch building a 1/48 Virginia. This video is very informative in that respect.Incidentally,you mentioned the comedic sight of a catapult launched Lancaster,unfortunately,not becoming a commonplace spectacle,however,catapult experiments were carried out on the Manchester.

The period between the 2 world wars was truly an amazing time for development and experimentation in technology in all military arms, but especially for aviation.

Carry out boarding actions - brilliant!

My father joined the RAF in 1922 and worked as a Fitter IIe and I until 1958. He liked the RR Eagle in the Vimy and the Napier Lion in the Virginia.

It is incredible that relic lasted until 1938.

Sitting in the wind at 10,000 feet? I'm glad I didn't have to do it.

Never heard of the Vickers Virginia before.Very old fashioned for 1938 mind so was the more modern Heyford!

Just watched your extra long vid, where you give a brief mention of the 'Virginia' during the description on the Vimy, and thought to myself, "hope Rex does one on the Virginia", when BAM! RU-vid tells me you've just uploaded one! (Spooky😂) I am familiar with this aircraft, and its role, as I served at RAF Henlow during the 1980's/90's as a Mechanical Transport Driver, and the area where we parked our HGV's and coaches had once been the shed where the parachutes were packed before being tested. The ghost story told to new drivers (fresh out of the driving school at RAF St Athan) was that one of the unfortunate pioneer parachutists haunted that area looking for the person who'd packed his 'chute. I'll admit I had a lot of fun scaring fellow MTD's in this area with rattling chains and moving things when they weren't looking 😂 Thanks for another excellent video.

You do a better job of finding and using photos and videos of the actual aircraft than other aviation sites. Thank you.

Here I was, thinking that the dust bin gunnery positions on some aircraft were pretty bizarre, the last Virginia's tail gunner stations have superseded that thinking. Have to admire the old girl, she was a beast for testing new ideas.

Hey Rex, could you at some point cover the Soviet anti-tank aircraft attempts? You may have done the Yak-9T before, but I'd like to see you cover the program as a whole, because it's a great example of "throw stuff at a wall until it sticks" that never stuck.

"Fighting tops", 5:17 : This is the point in the video where I was expecting sanity to intrude. Apparently, that particular ministry had found _countermeasures._

A testbed for quite an extensive list of technologies. Fascinating

It was also the first aircraft to have Ferry tanks, because it was a Virginia 'plane

Look at the rigging nightmare! There’s even bracing on the upper wing upper section. Must’ve been a nightmare to tension everything properly.

I love that they just had the bright idea to just make it all metal.

A fascinating video about an aircraft that probably deserves to be better remembered. It's kind of terrifying that an inter-war biplane bomber almost got stuck with frontline duties at the start of WWII

The folded-over Virginia wreck genuinely looks like the "tail-first" 1908 Santos Dumont 14-bis!

"Do I get to serve on an aircraft?" "On? ... Yes...." "Why did you pause?"

Thanks again....I have always been intrigued by the Ginnie, how many changes it went through, and how long it lasted!

Great show as always 👍

As always, Great Work! Thanks for the Fun!

Fascinating history, thanks for posting this one

I love these interwar aircraft. As always a great production. Your videos make me so happy.

Really enjoy your videos and commentaries! Keep up the outstanding work brother!

Great video, Rex. The Virginia also opened the path to the Vickers Victoria and Valentia bomber/transports through a mix of features with the Vickers Vernon, itself derived from the Vimy. Looking forward to the next one. Cheers.

An excellent review thank you

Very nice review of an aircraft I hadn't heard about

Q: Fokker has a lot of designs (some of them weird and wacky). And my question was how the Dutch did during WW1, Interwar, and WW2 period?

Thank you. Another great video

Love the channel, keep it up! 😊

Excellent, yet again!

Great video thank you

Thank you for another interesting video.

Thank you . . Always interesting I appreciate your efforts in to creating these informative videos. 👍

Absolutely love the interwar stuff. You do it as well as any. Would love to see you expand beyond UK/USA stuff. The French interwar bomber series were excellent. Think Italy/Japan/Poland/ Germany/ Russia (USSR) etc. Thanks again for these videos. Any WWI and interwar stuff is always welcome! Great job mate!

Rex you never disappoint ❤

As a pilot, flyboy, I would have loved to live in this era. Just imagine flying these 'projects'. Dangerous certainly, exciting definitely.

Hello Rex A couple of things: there is a video on RU-vid showing the in-flight refuelling. Given YT's propensity for deleting posts containing URLs (even to itself), search 'Vickers Virginia Achieves 1st Successful Inflight Re-Fueling'. The second thing is that the Virginia could NOT have been fitted with an autopilot. It would have been fitted with a gyropilot, which is an entirely different beast. Given the dates and your assertion that the autopilot was designed for large bombers, I'm going to stick my neck out and state that it was a Sperry A-2 gyropilot (nobody else was making them as Sperry held the patent and the A-2 was first announced in 1923). A gyropilot can maintain attitude but that's about it. Its three axes were climb/glide, bank and heading and each of the three axes can accept manual input from the crew, but none of them are capable of auto-correction e.g. if the aircraft has drifted from the planned route it due to a crosswind it will still maintain the heading entered into the gyropilot. It was also pneumatically powered, dog-slow to respond (which made the aircraft hunt on heading or pitch changes, something which Sperry acknowledge in the handbook 'Elmer Carries On') and had a tendency to spew hydraulic fluid all over the cockpit floor. Sperry call the electrically operated A-5 their first real autopilot. This was developed for the B-17 and disposed of the pnuematically operated gyroscopes in favour of vacuum tubes and electric gyroscopes. I don't know much about the A-5 gyropilot but I know a lot (too much? 😆) about the A-2 and A-3 gyropilots because of a project I was involved with.

Another great video. Rex, Please cover the SE5a fighter, thanks.

Chocks away chaps! Must have taken some courage to fly these. Hats off to the men that did.

Thanks Rex

never heard of this aircraft - very interesting.

Great video Rex. And a good job making it seem life like while using stills. I wonder, how many other major aircraft were converted to metal half way through their service life?

well done mate, a well done vid on a lesser know type

I hope that those air gunners were also issued with cutlasses, which are often handy in boarding actions.

20:12 TBF that was a pretty impressive take off. You also mentioned heating tubes for the crew, that sounds like a good topic for a video (evolution of these early systems, then maybe even a transition towards modern life-support?). Considering they had no canopy, I'm not even sure what these heating tubes were doing. Heated seats? Heated bodysuits?

Thanks!

Interesting stuff

That rear gunner position looks like a very cold and lonely place

But Vulcan is also a place 😉🖖

So cool!

If your bomber has a habit of hitting trees, you are definitely not flying high enough. Nonetheless this ship has a great story about it and it actually was quite successful. Respect.

Talking of all that developmental work, I'd really appreciate a programme on the development of in flight refuelling. I believe it started with hoses being trailled between aircraft! Scared 😮

On the opportunities for boarding actions: was this before or after American wingwalkers started changing from one aeroplane to another in flight? There's some terrifying footage on YT, including changing wheels on the undercarriage, but I think it's 1930s. So the fighting tops would have been ahead of their time.

Hi mate thanks for another great video, a suggestion if I may. Could you possibly do a video on the Burnelli CB16 monoplane. It looks like a very interesting plane. Thanks, regards Rob T.

You gotta love one Rex shouting out another Rex... I'm sure there aren't a lot of you out there. Maybe you two could have bonded over how much you hate being compared to a dinosaur. I can almost sympathize as I've been called "Jake from statefarm" for a greater part of a decade lol.

It's damn impressive for a plane to be used for pretty much the entire interwar period. If I didn't have the Virginia here as an example, I'd've said the rate of technological change prohibited it.

What is that white spatter on 15:48 pigeons or a good paintball practice? Did they use paintball for practice back then anyway?

You forgot to mention the one that crashed in the blue rich mountains, clipping a lonesome pine.

Rex, have you done anything on the Westland Wendover ?

I wouldn't have wanted to be a tail gunner. Cold, windy and lonely!

I’m confused about the “conversion” of a wooden airframe to metal. How is that different than building a whole new airplane?

can you do a video on the CAC 15?

Your use of what few pictures there are is far superior to some you tubes where they use any old clip to illustrate films, with no thought given to era, country, geography, etc. Some videos lose the plot entirely and misinform because of there ludicrous efforts to have a film clip to illustrate everything. Long live your use ofgood photo's and captions where necessary.

Did they try to use 8 Barrel Nock guns from those Fighting Tops?

Hey Rex any idea if you will ever do the Skyraider? AD-4 to AH-1 depending on the year. I know it’s a bit later in years than you normally do but it had an Interesting development life. Also when that thing was still flying with supersonic jets they obviously did something right 😂

2:51 That loaded weight is LESS than that achieved by some marks of the P-47. Just bear that in mind.

QUESTION: when you provide range figures, is that radius, or....?

Clearly this was the 1st true stealth aircraft ! How else can you explain that it served for nearly 20 years with so few people even knowing it existed ?🤔 I'm shocked , honestly, I've always considered myself an admirer of military aviation, especially the RAF....and yet this plane flew right by me .😯 (pun intended.) Well done !

Ahh, the pain...i bellylaughed...boardingactions indeed!

To brighten the day of airplane historians, Professor Rex digs out another forgotten flying oddity from dark corners of his hanger.

The arborial crashes have me wondering if those were Virginia eating trees. Charlie Brown would be petrified.

The more obscure the plane, the more my interest and curiosity are piqued.^^ Thank you so much for covering various aircraft, well known and obscure, Rex! Also, this video made me aware of the Vickers Virginia.^^

Insane to think that in less than 30 years, we were going supersonic.

The catapult didn't catch on, but there was RATO.

Was wafching a mossy earth update abiut the amazon rainforest (its at my doorstep, so im vurios to see what they doing up thwre), but a rex video is a rex video.

There were a/c similar but with massively deep, bulbous fuselages. I think they were the Hyderabad and the Hinaidi.

Those magnificent men in their flying machines vibes at around 10/11 mins in Japanese guy flying something with that tail configuration ?

Measured take off distances were recorded at between a minim um and maximum of 118 and 185 yards during tests!!!

At 15:55, is the tail gunner holding a car steering wheel as a joke?

1938! Good God, that's an eternity.

Do we have any documented evidence of a heavier than air vehicle conducting a boarding action against another?

13 years between the Virginia leaving service and the Canberra entering service!

The gun tops honestly look like somebody took two bathtubs and bolted them onto the wings.

Imagine being in a different 1938 timeline and having Britain declare war on you. Your early warning system detects and incoming raid out to sea of your nation. You scrabble and fly to intercept at point on the coast. And... wait... wait... land... refuel... take off again... wait...

That brings up an interesting question: Is your name also Reginald?

Hey, Bricks can fly, with big enough engines. The F4 Phantom is proof of that :) You have a wicked sense of humor :)