Vickers Vimy flies again after 75 years
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 พ.ย. 2023
- Lang Kidby pitched the idea of building a replica Vickers Vimy to Peter McMillan. With sponsorship, the aircraft was built and in 1994 it was flown from London to Darwin, retracing the route that the Smith Brothers took in 1919. There were problems aplenty to overcome.
I was walking the dog near Cirencester many years ago, I heard an unusual noise, looked across the fields, and saw the Vimy
it made my week
A Vickers Vimy also made the first crossing of the Atlantic on 14 June 1919 by British aviators Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown.
funny how that's forgotten so often in favour of another crossing by someone close to ten years later.
characterized in this flight from England to Australia, as the most important after the Wright brothers, seems a little strange, considering the flight by Bleriot across the channel and the alcock brown crossing of the Atlantic coast took place before. Both represented significantly greater challenges in the context of the technology of the day.
@@babaganoush6106 Both were great accomplishments and took courage or insanity not sure of which but Alcock and Brown didn't have catchy songs written about them as far as I know.
'Yesterday We Were In America' by Brendan Lynch ISBN 9 780750 990004. It's probably the best book I have read on that feat because it details everything that happened at the Newfoundland end, including the stories of the other fliers attempting the crossing. It also dispels many of the myths about the flight including the one about Arthur Brown climbing out on the wing to clear ice. No, I won't spoil it! 😄 I read the entire book in two sittings. Also, a quote from Lindbergh: 'Alcock and Brown showed me the way!' made after his solo crossing.
John alcock "captain jack " is my great uncle x2 he was an amazing man who even built his own airplane from damaged aircraft at his wartime airbase
Picked up a " coffee table" book commemorating the Vimy a few years ago. Was still in the original wrapping, but not for long. What a book.
I well remember sitting on 3rd floor of my secondary school in Wythenshawe Manchester and seeing the 1960 build Vimy (pronounced Vimmee) heading straight towards me flying out of Manchester Airport from the Alcock and Brown memorial it was built for.
I loved the history of this aeroplane and when they made this recreation and flight the National Geographic film and the accompanying book were quickly in my collection. However, a few years later, I couldn’t believe my luck when I had a call from an aviation friend saying the Vimy recreation was at our local airfield in southwest England preparing for a flight as Silver Queen to South Africa.... they needed someone to make throttle stops as a technicality for CAA or some authority inspection, although the fuel injected BMW engines did not need stops really. So in my small machine shop I made two very quickly fabricated adjustable throttle stop assemblies, having been allowed to climb over the Vimy to make measurements.
I was so proud to be part of the team all too briefly. And John LaNou ( I am so sorry I know that is wrong spelling, just can,t remember) signed my Vimy Australia book I had bought years before. I still treasure this and show my grand children, it was such an honour.
I think they mentioned in the film, but one thing that I admired was how she looked like a beautiful tall ship of the sky when in flight.
Off the point here. My dad was RAF 1948,. Dad got permission from his dad, to join up. My dad started flying in 1952 at 20 years old. Stopped flying, left the RAF As a family we took the same air route to Australia. Mum, dad and six children. Log book has dad at 936 hours and 30 minutes flying time. From the Prentice to the Javelin 5. Love.
The original G-EAOU still exists. It is on display at Adelaide airport. It was recently moved from it's original enclosure to a new purpose built display in the new Adelaide terminal.
Yes, I remember it from its first spot when the place was popularly known as “West Beach Airport” as opposed to “Parafield” 😊
My late father told me the initials of the aircraft stood for God 'Elp All Of Us.
Parafield is about 20k north of Adelaide airport. It is primarily a light aircraft field.@@Rickxta
Being older and living in Adelaide we have not forgotten Sir ross and Kieth Smith, the others Shier and the fourth not so well known
A cracking story. Something about old war planes that triggers the imagination. As a kid I loved the stories of flight and how the aircraft developed, from Bleriot crossing the English Channel in 1909 right through to the incredible machines of WW2 and beyond.
I saw this aircraft when it arrived in Longreach Qld. From the time we first saw to when it landed felt like a very long tine. It is very slow 🙂.
A magnificent machine and crew.
Sadly, I thought we were in for a new build but alas, it's a repeat story. However, this was an amazing achievement and I was lucky to see this replica fly.
I read the National Geographic article about the 90's flight over and over when I was a kid. Easily one of my favourites.
National Geographic Article? I gotta find that!
A great piece of history. All credit due to the dedication of everyone involved. Thanks a lot, Colin UK
Vimmy, only an old Ozzy could pronounce it Vimey but a great doc and thanks for all the info! 😊👍🏻
Gosh! This is the first I have heard of this! I read about the original flight and was inspired. But now I see that they had the British Empire to guard them along their way then.
I remember when this happened. It was covered by National Geographic Magazine shortly afterward they landed. Great stuff!
I remember that story. I think at one point a car was pulling ahead of them because of that headwind!
I remember this from the National Geographic artical, I had the magazine for many years and was envious of the pilots.
Wonderful! Interesting that Aussies say Vimy with a long "i". Canadians say it with a short "i" (like "Timmy"). Vimy (the ridge) is a big deal in Canadian military history for obvious reasons.
Yes, it's vimi not viimi
Hmmm, the narrator is the only Aussie I've heard say it that way.
I've only ever heard it rhyme with Timmy 👍
As a South Australian, I am familiar with a site in the Adelaide hills, named Vimy Ridge in memory of the battle. It has always been pronunced Vimmmy to the best of my knowledge. I have not heard the V eye me" pronunciation before.
I agree, "Vimy" has a short "i" like Tim. I am Australian and my father and grandfather (WW1 veteran) pronounced it so. However, it was a very good video beyond that.
Same, I’m a Kiwi and always thought it was pronounced like Timmy…
THANK YOU FOR POSTING THIS AMAZING STORY!!! BEST STORY ON TH-cam!!!❤👌
Glad you enjoy it!
Vim -- E.
It's pronounced Vim-- ee
After Vimy Ridge , a part of the front lines in WW1.
The battle of Vimy Ridge where great Allied losses were incurred.
Great Video.
I love guys like this.
Great video of a very under reported aviation achievement.
(I love seeing old planes takeoff and land. Yet the landing sequences always get cut short!)
Under reported?? It made National Geographic!! They made a movie out of it. I had it on vhs back in like 1998
I live in Wales UK 🏴 in a small village called coity near Bridgend mid-glamorgan and back in the early 1900s a Vickers vimy landed on the golf field in the village, there's a photo of the plane and the pilots and I have seen the picture.
Hard to believe that they crossed the Atlantic in that plane. Brave men!
Shows how good it was.
It was quite the adventure--lousy weather, mechanical issues, loss of radio, etc.
There is a much longer video of this amazing achievement, which I used to have on VHS. Interestingly, the Smith Bros said that the registration G-EAOU should have stood for 'Gawd 'Elp All Of Us'....!
Was taken to Vimy ridge in France last year and have been lucky to see two different Vimys fly in life
Loved this video .... these folks were *determined* to make this happen !!!
Thank you
The Vimy that was built in the Uk in the 1960s flew to Manchester airport in 1969 where it took pride of place in an exhibition celebrating 50 years of Alcock and Brown’s trans Atlantic crossing. The exhibition was under an inflated tent. The aircraft caught fire when the tent was being taken down, ironically by the airport fire service. The material on the wings was ignited by the bright sun reflecting off the highly polished engine cowlings. I was working at the airport at the time and witnessed the accident. I was told that the Vimy was built by apprentices and engineers at BAC but I cannot confirm that. I agree that the pronunciation should be to rhyme with Jimmy and not with slimy.
I can remember this. Great adventure.
Fantastic! Well done on this documentary - very much enjoyed it and seeing the Vickers flying again, esp over the iconic landmarks. Got a chuckle out of the description of the ease of the first flight of the Smith brothers due to them only travelling over British territory, compared to the situation now. Imagine how much less tension there'd be in the world! The peoples can come together over their collective dislike of the British instead of fighting among themselves (footnote: sarcasm alert - not serious).
Back in the early 70's I saw a Replica of the Alcock and Browns Vimys Cockpit in our Towns Museum , as my Gran got her Library books stamped I ( as a kid ) marveled at this Gorgous looking Replica , never thought I would see one Fly ..Great Vid.
Those were brave men that flew that plane. Looks great !
Watched from Old Harbour Jamaica. I envy you
Steve Fosset and Mike Rebolt flew a replica Vickey’s Vimy (with Chevy engines) to replicate the first Trans-Atlantic flight from St Johns Newfoundland (now Canada) to Ireland in 1919.
I always understood that Vimy to have BMW V-12s.
Sir, many thanks for posting such a well produced and narrated video. Fascinating and a record of historical significance - very well done to all concerned with building and flying this aircraft. One hopes that it is now in pride of place at an aircraft museum in Australia!
Don't forget Alcock and Brown, Newfoundland to Connemara in Ireland .
I remember watching about the flight on the BBC News back in the day. Nice to have a reminder here on TH-cam.
What an excellent way to spend money and expertise. Recreating history. Wished it would fly over me!
Brilliant thanks.🇬🇧🏴
Truly amazing.
What a fantastic initiative! Thank you very much for sharing via this vid, I appreciate it a lot 👍
Greetings from the other side, the Netherlands, Tonny.
I can't spend more than an hour on my flight simulator before I'm bushed (no autopilot).That was a crazy flight to make...............................
Does anyone know where the narrator was filmed in, what a fascinating room in itself apart from the fascinating documentary.
I remembered read this journey in the indonesian aviation magazine (Angkasa) when i was kid while they visited indonesia
Imagine the surprise and confusion of those farmers having an anachronism drop out the sky onto their field! Looks like they were very happy to help with the engine swap (I’m guessing they were paid pretty well for clearing an airstrip through their field).
What an amazing adventure!!
Many thanks for watching.
Enjoyed the video but it grated on my ears to hear Vimy pronounced Vymie instead of how I have always imagined it: Vimie.
I love Australians. Pronunciation of English words as spoken by all who claim to be English speakers can be hilarious. I’m hearing the letter… I… being pronounced as if it was recited all by itself. Lots of fun when getting a Brit, an Auzzi, a Kiwi, a Yank, a Kanuk saying… Good-day.
Vimm-eee may well be pronounced a host of those when the emphasis is placed on different sill-ah-bills.
A great video telling the story of an incredible historical flight & the modern rebuilding & recreation of both the plane & the fight.
Thanks.
Now that is exactly how to comment on a video. Thank you.
Fantastic
Awesome stuff!
Biplanes are the sailing vessels of aviation. In both cases, when they passed, they were replaced by highly-efficient successors that had everything but a soul.
I so like that analogy!
Great stuff - thank you.
Well done!!!
What an adventure! And what a beautiful aircraft!!
He'll of a story..saw it first many years ago on PBS IIRC...
What a beautiful airplane!
Great job 👌
I'm not familiar with the Vickers Vymey. I'm an Australian, and everyone I know who's interested in aircraft pronounces it Vimy.
Correct, and he mispronounces it time after time
Yes, how this faux pas got past the edit is anyone's guess.
I guess we just have to roll with it, since he also rattled off the Gulf country as "erimates" instead of "Emirates". Otherwise he has a pleasant presentation manner with no unwelcome drama.
So Vimy is pronounced "Vimy"? Now tell us what colour's red...
Is that "VEE-mee" or "Vimmee"?
Well, we all learn something new. I’ve always pronounced it Vimey, rather than Vimmy. But then I don’t know any historical aviation enthusiasts who might have corrected me. It’s only taken me 59 years to be corrected by the internet!
Certainly, in England, with no one to ‘correct us’, we’d pronounce Vimy, as Vimey. To pronounce it Vimmy, it would need the double ‘m’. But of course, it’s a French name, not British - which I had never realised.
Interesting that I’ve been wrong all these years! I’m now watching YT videos about the battle of Vimy Ridge!
I remember many years ago the Air and Space museum was rebuilding one of these.
Got to see it up close and talk to the mechanics that were restoring it at Garber Maryland.
I was fascinated by how stiff the original fabric was, supposedly they used scotch linen and varnish in the old days.
There isn't one at the Air and Space Museum, there's only 2 orginals , one in England and one in australia
The seats were actually baskets to hold their fing giant balls. All of those high risk high rush adventures make for great history.....if they make it. Heros and fools look identical in the mirror. Great risk great reward. As a pilot and engineer, I would have loved to been the mechanic on that adventure. Some of the accounts still make my hair stand straight.
I remember going to Archerfield airport to watch this plane come in. It had BMW V-12’s not Chevy V-8’s
I was wondering if they were going to run into issues getting clearance in former UK colonies. 🤔
Glad it was a successful adventure.
The closest I've been in something like that was a 1940s tubular steel and fabric single engine taildragger.
I probably would have used a portable intercom in the Vimy to be able to talk over the engines, but I don't know what their weight limits were.
Thanks, just helps to put into perspective Alcock and Browns achievement using original RR engines, Tiger engines I recall.
Great video...👍
Thank you 👍
That C-5 is out of Westover AFB Massachusetts
Nothing like a video that takes me back to FS2004....
Marvellous!
Amazing!
Those magnificent men in their flying machines 🤣
I'd love to see (and hear) that Vimy replica flying!
I have. It is incredibly noisy. The original landed in my home town. This one only flew overhead.
The certification in Oz sounds a bit like the UK; red tape hinders you building stuff. As long as something's got two 'plugs per cylinder and duplicated coils it probably would have got certification eventually, but as i understand it it had to get special permission to fly ONCE in England. The spanners that do Cessna pleasure flights over my house are probably more of a risk to life and limb. In a cross wind they can't even manage to point the nose into it, you see 'em doing 90 knots forwards and 25 sideways.
th-cam.com/video/AFedpGeMJ04/w-d-xo.html
Trivia: The first armed plane had a machine gun mounted on the hood. No special preparation. Pilot took off, then reached for the machine gun controls.
Shot the propellers off.
Now machine guns are timed to the spin of the propellers, to go in-between the blades.
I love things that seem obvious AFTERWARDS.
and also come too bundaberg Queensland Australia and see Burt Hinklers House and Museum hall of aviation.
Nice job blokes, good thing these OH&S people didn't get involved in the motor replacement, you'd still be doin it!
I saw one of the test flights out of Hamilton. It was during build at the Renaissance Fair which was then at Black Point, about 3 miles north of Hamilton. I looked up and saw a WW I bomber! I had no idea of the project or the England-Australia flight, or where it was flying out of, and assumed there was an airshow nearby. Now I know the rest of the story....
We need more of this spirit of adventure in a world run by faceless box tickers!
If you look at the numbers (speeds, wing loading, power to weight ratio, &c.) it becomes obvious that the Vimy is the world's largest ultra-close formation of ultralight aircraft.
WOW!
Blimey its a Vimy..a superb re creation, a credit to sponsors National Geographic, Shell and many more. the other replica burnt out when a plastic shelter caught fire at manchester airport not refuelling.
Saw one in Southern Calif at Flabob Airport in Riverside. It had the BMW engines installed. When it came into sight down the riverbed from from the East, there was a lot of laughing from the crowd who obviously expected a sound different from two ultralights inbound. They ran the BMWs at a much higher rpm than the original engines, so the sound was somewhat comical - it didn't fit the look of the aircraft at all.
Once on the ground, it was however, a gorgeous reproduction.
Vickers "VYE-me?" I believe that's pronounced "VIM-ee" after the famous WW1 battle considered Canada's greatest accomplishment of that war.
You can't even build a 67k granny flat here in Hobart without 21k of red tape and counting if you're an owner builder, I wish I could build IT overseas.
Espetácular 🌟
Obrigado por assistir
I wonder if this is the Vickers Vimy that flew over Pittsburg and Antioch, California?
Here's some more of the Vimy while it was at Caboolture.prior to attending an airshow at Archerfield. (Caboolture is Lang Kidbys home aerodrome). This video gets up close and personal: th-cam.com/video/PIPnhkj7jzs/w-d-xo.html
This is on that trip from England in 1994.
The griping here about the pronunciation of Vimy is academic as it varies State by State in Australia.
The Chev engine did not fail as such, the fault was found to be a spring in the timing control in a distributor. Peter McMillan said that he wouldn't fly with the Chevs after that and at one stage a pair of Canadian Orendas were fitted. Also fitted were the BMW engines. Apparently an attempt to fly the replica from California to Oskosh one year was thwarted part way when insurance could not be obtained for the new engines. Others may give a more complete story on this.
Alcott and Brown nosed into an Irish field in 1919 after crossing The Atlantic Ocean.
Grandad worked on these as a RIGGER..was offered a parachute jump in those days ..but turned it down.
GE AOU was the reg No. Known since as "God Help All Of Us""
No surprise about exciting the Egyptian air defenses who have been on alert since 1967. Guess flying over India in 1919 was not such a problem considering the Brits owned India then.
I've flown in that plane. Amazing project!! But I always heard Vimy with a short i, not a long i, as if it was spelled Vimmy. Does not rhyme with blimey.
Отличный фильм. Подписался.
Did anyone else make the Airfix kit as a kid?
Shame to see that no one in the early comments knew this planes engines were used in Star Wars
0:33 All screw threads are backwards (Left Handed) In Australia because it’s south of the equator.
correct me if I'm wrong but was tis plane in RNAS Yeovilton 1996, because I was working in Varu.
Just goes to show that an ancient pair of Rolls Royce engines perform better than modern GM V8 models!
Geared automotive engines running at close to their maximum horsepower and torque rated RPM in place of a purpose built aircraft engine designed for maximum output at the RPM range the propeller requires is a bad idea. No automotive engine is designed to run constantly at 75% max power for hours on end. Who made the engine is irrelevant.
@@pete1342 I wonder why they used a car engine at all? The Rolls Royce Eagle engine was a V 12 producing between 225 and 275 Horsepower depending on variant. There are plenty of aero engines that could do the job.
@@pete1342 Which is why so many aircraft types use air cooled Volkswagen beetle engines. Because they are perfectly happy to run at maximum power for hours and hours.
It's Vimy as in Tim !
Thank you, slight ironic the Smith Brother did it faster in 1919.
The original one was flying mostly through the British Empire. However it took the Smith brothers rather longer to get from Darwin to the rest of Australia.
...But the problems encountered are strikingly similar to pioneer flights over multiple territories in the twenties..- trigger happy goons, engine failures, field repairs and engines hoisted using wooden poles, makeshift airstrips thrown together (probably using ox power!) Locals standing around wondering what the hell is going on... I find it remarkable that they only lost 2 weeks.
@@thephilpott2194 I chuckled when the goddamned chevvalay engine packed it in. An engine that had benefited from eighty or more years of internal combustion engine development, plus all the race engine development as well, versus the RR Eagle, an engine essentially from the great war. Should have used Chrysler Hemi engines from the 1960's, or at least the 440 wedge engines from the same era.
God 'Elp All Of Us...
Vimy Mate , Vimy
Why are the propeller's retaining nut's reverse threaded in the opening shot, or is the footage reversed?
They were Holden engines.
01:08 after Santos Dumont.😊