Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The 1.59-inch breech-loading Vickers Q.F. gun, Mk II was a British light artillery piece designed during World War I. Originally intended for use in trench warfare , it was instead tested for air-to-air and air-to-ground use by aircraft.
Vickers Limited was a British engineering conglomerate. The business began in Sheffield in 1828 as a steel foundry and became known for its church bells, going on to make shafts and propellers for ships, armour plate and then artillery.
Vickers was a pioneer in producing airliners, early examples being converted from Vimy bombers. Post-WWII, Vickers went on to manufacture the piston-engined Vickers VC.1 Viking airliner, the Viscount and Vanguard turboprop airliners and (as part of BAC) the VC10 jet airliner, which was used in RAF service as an aerial refuelling tanker until 2013.
With these acquisitions, Vickers could now produce a complete selection of products, from ships and marine fittings to armour plate and a whole suite of ordnance. In 1901 the Royal Navy's first submarine, Holland 1, was launched at the Naval Construction Yard. In 1902 Vickers took a half share in the famous Clyde shipyard John Brown & Company.
In 1919 Vickers moved their aircraft production from Crayford to Brooklands aerodrome at Weybridge in Surrey. The plane's main claim to fame was that on 14/15 June 1919, Captain Jack Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten-Brown in a converted Vimy (built at Weybridge), made the world's first non-stop trans-oceanic flight , across the Atlantic.
The Vickers team quickly assembled their aircraft and, at around 1:45 p.m. on 14 June the Vimy took off from Lester's Field. [12] Alcock and Brown flew the modified Vickers Vimy, powered by two Rolls-Royce Eagle 360 hp engines which were supported by an on-site Rolls-Royce team led by engineer Eric Platford. [13]
The building was originally commissioned as a canteen and mess room for the local armaments factory in Crayford which had been established by the Maxim Nordenfelt Guns and Ammunition Company in the 1880s and then been acquired by Vickers in 1897. [2] The canteen was designed in the Queen Anne style, built in red brick and was completed in 1915. [3]
The remnants of the settlement became absorbed into Crayford with the building of a munition village to facilitate the expansion of Vickers' armaments factory during the 1915 to 1919 period. In 1920 the area became part of the Crayford Urban District of Kent (having previously been in Dartford Rural District ).