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Airspeed Viceroy

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The Airspeed AS.8 Viceroy was a British racing version of the Airspeed AS.6 Envoy built by Airspeed (1934) Limited at Portsmouth. The Viceroy was built to order for Captain T. Neville Stack and Sidney Lewis Turner, to compete in the England-Australia MacRobertson Air Race. Only one aircraft, registered G-ACMU, was built.


Design and development

The Viceroy was a modified Airspeed Envoy. Modifications included:

  • Main landing gear was strengthened to allow higher weight takeoff
  • An auxiliary petrol tank was installed in the aft fuselage. Its capacity was 270 Imp gallon/1,227 litres.

Operational history

The Airspeed Viceroy started the race from RAF Mildenhall, England, but after several reliability problems including with the mainwheel brakes, it was withdrawn from the race at Athens. The pilots concluded that it would be unsafe to proceed and they would probably be unable to finish the race. The aircraft returned to Portsmouth and was then stored until July 1936 when it was sold the following month by the French concern, SFTA and departed to France en route to the Spanish Civil War.

Documentation regarding the Viceroy's service with the Spanish Republican forces is sketchy. The intention was to convert the aircraft into a bomber and photographs suggest that it did receive new markings and was stationed at an airbase, but further information is not available as to its actual service.[1]

Specifications

File:Airspeed Viceroy.JPG
The Airspeed AS-8 Viceroy with an unnamed pilot.

Template:Aircraft specification

See also

See also

References

  • The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Aircraft (Part Work 1982-1985). Orbis Publishing.
  • Jackson, A.J. British Civil Aircraft since 1919 Volume 1. London: Putnam, 1974. ISBN 0-370-10006-9.

External links

Template:Airspeed aircraft

fr:Airspeed AS.8 Viceroy

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Airspeed Viceroy".