+ AND FINALLY PLUS - 75 and the Viscount

It was off to Brooklands Museum, Weybridge on 18 July, to join a special day held to celebrate 75 years since its maiden flight and  70 years of commercial operations for the Vickers’ Viscount,  the world's first (turbo) jet passenger aircraft.  And where better to gather than at the very special ‘Viscount Stephen Piercey’ G-APIM (‘India Mike’), which was, incidentally, the 50th Viscount off the production line.  Byline Tom Singfield and Alison Chambers. 

Flight International’s Stephen (Steve) was an exceptional, talented young aviation photographer and writer; founder of quarterly piston/turboprop Propliner magazine and author of Sky Truck, who lived near Brooklands at Addlestone.  He tragically lost his life, aged 27, on 20 May 1984, while on an air-to-air photography assignment at the Hanover Air Show.  

Such was his esteem in the aviation world that UK charter airline British Air Ferries (BAF) offered to name one of its Viscounts in his name.  Poignantly, his late father, Ray Piercey, had flown ‘India Mike’ as a BEA captain during his long flying career.  He also took the controls when the aircraft – now in his son’s name – flew guests to Jersey from Southend on 21 May 1985. 

A number of them, including BAF’s Mike Sessions and Propliner magazine's long-time Editor Tony Merton-Jones, turned out on 18 July for a special anniversary occasion.  TNU's Editor-in-Chief Malcolm Ginsberg made the event too, as BAF's PR man the organiser of the 'Last Viscount at Heathrow' (see www.btnews.co.uk/article/3312).  With BAF’s Commercial Director, Mike Kay, sadly absent in Scotland, his press trips to Jersey were legendry.  

History of the Viscount

The prototype Viscount G-AHRF made its maiden flight on 16 July 1948 from the Vickers' grass airfield at Wisley and appeared at that year's Farnborough Air Show to great acclaim.  The world’s first regional turboprop, it was to arguably become the UK’s most successful commercial airliner; 445 were built, flying in every continent except Antarctica.  The last of an evolving marque was delivered to China’s CAAC on 16 April 1964.

Its initial design featured Armstrong Siddeley Mamba turboprops, before a re-designed, improved Rolls-Royce Dart powerplant was selected. This was a pivotal decision with British European Airways (BEA) duly recognising the Viscount as an economical, reliable and attractive short- / medium-haul airliner.

Its first commercial flight was 29 July 1950, when V630 G-AHRF flew Northolt to Paris with ten special guests, including Vickers’ Chief Designer George Edwards, Peter Masefield and Frank Whittle, all later being knighted.

The first Series V.700 Viscounts were designed initially for 43 passengers, enhanced to 53 in a circular cross section pressurised fuselage, featuring legendary large cabin windows, also designed initially as emergency exits.

Forty-five V.700 Viscounts were built at Brooklands before production was moved to Hurn/Bournemouth airport to allow construction of the new, bigger V.800 series. The new version featured a 3ft 10in stretch over the V.700 and an increase in usable cabin length of 9ft 3ins, achieved by moving the bulkhead further aft.

BEA’s first production version, the V.802, first flew on 27 July 1956, carrying 58 passengers in a two-class layout.  It was to be the first of 24 for BEA.  Vickers, meanwhile, continued modifying the aircraft.  The last in the series were based on the V.810.  

Viscount Stephen Piercey ‘India Mike’

Friends of Viscount Stephen Piercey, is a group who continue to support the preservation of G-APIM at Brooklands. Passionately led by aviation historian, writer and photographer Tom Singfield, his close friend, was instrumental in arranging 200 special postal souvenir covers featuring a Jersey Post stamp, illustrated by artist Toby Dixon, with V.806 ‘Viscount Stephen Piercey.’ The covers were flown over Wisley and Brooklands on the 75 th Anniversary in a DHC Chipmunk G-DHCC and were signed by pilot Tony de Bruyn. A small number were also signed by Toby Dixon. This was followed a few days later with a gathering at Brooklands with a celebratory cake and fizz.  VIP guest was Patsy Piercey, Steve’s mother, who just a few days before celebrated her 99th birthday.

'India Mike’ first flew from Brooklands on 4 June 1958.  It received its Certificate of Airworthiness on 20 June and delivered to BEA at Heathrow four days later.  All BEA’s Viscounts featured 'Discovery' class, named after famous discoverers. ‘India Mike’ was christened 'Robert Boyle' after the Irish scientist born in 1627.
 
In its original layout, along with all BEA V.800 Viscounts, 'India Mike’ carried 42 tourists and 16 First Class passengers, serving European routes as far as Tel Aviv, Moscow and Tripoli from Heathrow.  ‘India Mike’ was also used for route-proving flights to Budapest and Prague in the early 1960s.

After more than ten years with BEA, ‘India Mike' was placed into open storage at Cambridge Airport during February–November 1969.  It returned to BEA service for two years wherein it was transferred to Cambrian Airways on 2 November 1971.

‘India Mike’ then flew to its new home at Cardiff Rhoose Airport. On 18 January 1972 it emerged resplendent in Cambrian Airways’ colours (an orange upper fuselage and tail with stylised Welsh dragon).  Months later Cambrian was absorbed into newly formed British Airways (BA), whereupon it went to the paint shop again.  On 12 November 1973 it emerged in BA colours with small Cambrian titles.

A change in corporate identity later saw the fleet titles amended to 'British' and new titles were applied to ‘India Mike’ in November 1980.

By 1982, ‘India Mike’ was the last Viscount to be retired by BA.  In 1984 BAF purchased it, along with several other ex-BA V.800s. After a major overhaul the aircraft was service ready for BAF by July. 
In commercial service with BAF the V.800 Viscount fleet flew with 76 passengers in an Economy layout or seven tons of freight.

An abrupt end to the flying career of ‘India Mike’ came on 11 January 1988 when the aircraft suffered major damage at Southend when a taxiing Guernsey Airlines’ Shorts 330 (G-BHWT) lost hydraulic power, leading to brake and steering failure. The Shorts collided with the empty parked Viscount, destroying the lefthand side of the nose. Assessed as being beyond economic repair it was stored, and many serviceable parts were later donated to other BAF Viscounts.

On 29 June 1989, ‘India Mike’ was offered to The Brooklands Museum for preservation. Brooklands' Curator of Aviation, Julian Temple and Roger Hargreaves of 'Proteus Aero Services' inspected ‘India Mike’ and subsequently BAF agreed to a long-term loan of the aircraft to the Museum for preservation and static display. 
Between August 1989 and February 1990, ‘India Mike’ was dismantled and repairs started by Proteus' engineer Mike Bates, with assistance from 'The National Rescue Group'.
 
'The Friends of Viscount Stephen Piercey' was formed in 1990 as a fund-raising group towards the restoration of ‘India Mike’.  They have raised thousands of pounds to provide an engineer to rebuild the damaged nose section, and with the help of volunteers, to continue to restore the aircraft to static display standard.  In 1993, the ‘Friends’ paid for a complete re-spray into the then current British World Airlines livery.In 2001, the historic relevance of ‘India Mike’ was honoured by Corgi Models when they released a scale model of ‘Viscount Stephen Piercey’.www.brooklandsmuseum.com

Index/Home page
 

READERS' COMMENT

All comments are filtered to exclude any excesses but the Editor does not have to agree with what is being said. 200 words maximum

James Wiggins, Weybridge

Well done the Viscount fans. The only problem is that it heralded much more sophisticated aircraft. The unpressurised DC3 still flies on, but not the fantastic Vickers aircraft.