On June 15, 1936, the Vickers Wellington twin engine bomber made its maiden flight. The bomber would be produced from 1936 until the end of World War II in 1945, with a massive production run of well over 11,400 copies, over 4 000 more than the larger and more famous 7377 Avro Lancasters built. The Wellington was quickly found to be inadequate for a role as a daylight heavy bomber but proved highly effective in other roles as a medium bomber, both versatile and resilient.
Digging Deeper
Designed by inventive genius Barnes Wallis, the guy that gave us the dam-busting bouncing bomb, the gigantic Tall Boy and Grand Slam bombs, and later “swing wing” designs for use on supersonic jets, the Wellington used Wallis’ geodesic (or geodetic) design of strong, but light, aluminum alloy cells covered with a doped fabric skin giving the plane a somewhat honeycomb appearance. This design by Wallis resulted in an incredibly strong latitudinal airframe that could survive enormous portions of the skin shot or burned away, or even portions blown off. The only drawback to the geodesic construction was a lack of longitudinal rigidity that made the Wellington a poor choice for towing gliders, something it was not intended for in the first place. (The fuselage would actually stretch and “grow” while towing a glider!) Wallis had designed other airplanes and even airships using the geodesic design.
