Vickers Wellington B.X
The only British bomber which served throughout the entirety of World War II, the Vickers Wellington was designed in response to Specification B.9/32, which called for a high-speed, two engined medium bomber. Though the competition for the specification was won by the Handley-Page Hampden, Vickers’ Type 271 Crecy interested the RAF Air Ministry enough that a prototype was flown in June 1936. After several changes, it was accepted and placed in production as the Wellington B.I: the name was changed because it was built similarly to the Vickers Wellesley light bomber.
When it entered service in October 1938, the Wellington was considered revolutionary, due partially to its high speed (for the time) and moreso for its unique construction. Dr. Barnes Wallis, who would become more famous later for his development of heavy bombs, designed the Wellington based on both the Wellesley and his earlier work on airships such as the ill-fated R101. This construction used aluminum geodetic beams as a framework, with the frame being covered in fabric. The geodetic framework ensured that the Wellington was a tough, well-built aircraft, and yet was light enough to give it good performance and range to reach targets as far east as Berlin, Germany. It had no armor or self-sealing fuel tanks, but this was not considered to be much of a problem at the time.
RAF Bomber Command committed its Wellingtons literally from the start, with bombers hitting German ships at Brunsbuttel and Wilhelmshaven on 4 September and 12 December 1939, respectively. Losses in these raids were heavy, pointing out the vulnerability of the Wellington from attacks to the sides or vertically--its turrets could only cover the front and rear—and the impossibility of daylight attacks on Germany without fighter escort. As a result, Bomber Command moved its attacks to nighttime. The Wellington did better at night; crews would often approach their targets from high altitude, shut off their engines and enter a shallow glide to the target itself, then run up to full power as they dropped their bombs, minimizing their vulnerability to German defenses.
This did not always work, but if it was hit, the Wellington showed its resiliency: because of the extensive framework, the Wellington could take near catastrophic damage and still return to base. Dozens of Wellingtons would return home with the fabric partially burned off, but the aircraft intact; others could have whole sections of framework destroyed but still return home, as the rest of the construction could handle the loss. One Wellington flight engineer, James Ward, won the Victoria Cross by climbing out of the fuselage and onto the wing, using the framework as handholds to reach a burning engine and smother it—while at 15,000 feet over Germany. For this reason, the Wellington was well-liked by its crews, and affectionately referred to as the “Wimpy” (after Popeye character J. Wellington Wimpy).
Though Wellingtons suffered the same terrible rate of casualties as the rest of Bomber Command as German nightfighter defenses improved, they remained the backbone of Bomber Command until the advent of the Avro Lancaster in early 1943. Wellingtons made up over half of the famous “Thousand Bomber Raid” (Operation Millennium), the first large-scale bomber attack on a German city, Cologne. As the Lancaster replaced it, the Wellington was relegated to less defended areas, such as North Africa, Italy, and the Far East, where Wellingtons were used against the Japanese in Burma. Others were seconded to Coastal Command to hunt U-boats, where its range and reliability made it valuable. It was also used for Elint duties and secret missions over Germany, and served as possibly the first airborne early warning aircraft, when radar-equipped Wellingtons were used to vector deHavilland Mosquito nightfighters to intercept V-1 cruise missiles in late 1944.
The Wellington would remain in production until October 1945, outlasting all other British bombers except the Lancaster, and set records for production rivalled only by the B-24 Liberator. (As an experiment, Vickers workers built a Wellington from scratch in less than 24 hours.) 11,464 Wellingtons were produced during the war, with the loss of over 1300 in combat; today, only two Wellingtons remain, both in museums.
The Malmstrom Museum’s Foreign Bombers collection has a single Wellington B.X, a later-model version. This aircraft, HE 239 NA-Y (Y-Yoke) flew with 428 Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force, based at RAF Dalton. On 9 April 1943, this aircraft took a direct hit from a German 88mm shell that blew the entire rear turret off the aircraft, killing the tail gunner. Despite this damage, the Wellington’s toughness enabled the pilot to complete his bomb run and return home. It is painted in standard RAF Bomber Command colors of dark green and brown over black for night operations, with late war roundels.
Vickers Wellington B.X
The only British bomber which served throughout the entirety of World War II, the Vickers Wellington was designed in response to Specification B.9/32, which called for a high-speed, two engined medium bomber. Though the competition for the specification was won by the Handley-Page Hampden, Vickers’ Type 271 Crecy interested the RAF Air Ministry enough that a prototype was flown in June 1936. After several changes, it was accepted and placed in production as the Wellington B.I: the name was changed because it was built similarly to the Vickers Wellesley light bomber.
When it entered service in October 1938, the Wellington was considered revolutionary, due partially to its high speed (for the time) and moreso for its unique construction. Dr. Barnes Wallis, who would become more famous later for his development of heavy bombs, designed the Wellington based on both the Wellesley and his earlier work on airships such as the ill-fated R101. This construction used aluminum geodetic beams as a framework, with the frame being covered in fabric. The geodetic framework ensured that the Wellington was a tough, well-built aircraft, and yet was light enough to give it good performance and range to reach targets as far east as Berlin, Germany. It had no armor or self-sealing fuel tanks, but this was not considered to be much of a problem at the time.
RAF Bomber Command committed its Wellingtons literally from the start, with bombers hitting German ships at Brunsbuttel and Wilhelmshaven on 4 September and 12 December 1939, respectively. Losses in these raids were heavy, pointing out the vulnerability of the Wellington from attacks to the sides or vertically--its turrets could only cover the front and rear—and the impossibility of daylight attacks on Germany without fighter escort. As a result, Bomber Command moved its attacks to nighttime. The Wellington did better at night; crews would often approach their targets from high altitude, shut off their engines and enter a shallow glide to the target itself, then run up to full power as they dropped their bombs, minimizing their vulnerability to German defenses.
This did not always work, but if it was hit, the Wellington showed its resiliency: because of the extensive framework, the Wellington could take near catastrophic damage and still return to base. Dozens of Wellingtons would return home with the fabric partially burned off, but the aircraft intact; others could have whole sections of framework destroyed but still return home, as the rest of the construction could handle the loss. One Wellington flight engineer, James Ward, won the Victoria Cross by climbing out of the fuselage and onto the wing, using the framework as handholds to reach a burning engine and smother it—while at 15,000 feet over Germany. For this reason, the Wellington was well-liked by its crews, and affectionately referred to as the “Wimpy” (after Popeye character J. Wellington Wimpy).
Though Wellingtons suffered the same terrible rate of casualties as the rest of Bomber Command as German nightfighter defenses improved, they remained the backbone of Bomber Command until the advent of the Avro Lancaster in early 1943. Wellingtons made up over half of the famous “Thousand Bomber Raid” (Operation Millennium), the first large-scale bomber attack on a German city, Cologne. As the Lancaster replaced it, the Wellington was relegated to less defended areas, such as North Africa, Italy, and the Far East, where Wellingtons were used against the Japanese in Burma. Others were seconded to Coastal Command to hunt U-boats, where its range and reliability made it valuable. It was also used for Elint duties and secret missions over Germany, and served as possibly the first airborne early warning aircraft, when radar-equipped Wellingtons were used to vector deHavilland Mosquito nightfighters to intercept V-1 cruise missiles in late 1944.
The Wellington would remain in production until October 1945, outlasting all other British bombers except the Lancaster, and set records for production rivalled only by the B-24 Liberator. (As an experiment, Vickers workers built a Wellington from scratch in less than 24 hours.) 11,464 Wellingtons were produced during the war, with the loss of over 1300 in combat; today, only two Wellingtons remain, both in museums.
The Malmstrom Museum’s Foreign Bombers collection has a single Wellington B.X, a later-model version. This aircraft, HE 239 NA-Y (Y-Yoke) flew with 428 Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force, based at RAF Dalton. On 9 April 1943, this aircraft took a direct hit from a German 88mm shell that blew the entire rear turret off the aircraft, killing the tail gunner. Despite this damage, the Wellington’s toughness enabled the pilot to complete his bomb run and return home. It is painted in standard RAF Bomber Command colors of dark green and brown over black for night operations, with late war roundels.