44 http://www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE SEPTEMBER 2017the late 1960s but insisted it wanted
direct operating costs at least 15
per cent lower than the 707-436s it
was currently fl ying. Although the
707-820 was, for a while at least,
the standard to aim at, BAC boss
Sir George Edwards insisted in
September 1964 that the corporation’s
interpretation of BOAC’s
requirements would not necessarily
result in something resembling the
Boeing product. "That”, he said,
“would be technically easy... which
is one reason why we probably won't
do it."
He was certainly right about the
designs for bigger VC10s not being
like the -820. But his statement that
BAC’s engineers were “knee-deep in
drawings” was a slight exaggeration,
although it was true that a large
number of ideas did emerge from
Weybridge in the mid-1960s. Today,
these ideas, in the form of papers,
drawings, graphs and brochures, are
fi led away in the BAC archives, now
housed at Brooklands Museum.
To meet the competition and
BOAC’s requirements, BAC hadDOUBLE-DECK VC10
come up with some fairly radical
ideas. These included a projected
300-seater with two standard VC10
fuselages and four tail-mounted
engines, and a 450-seater with three
fuselages and six engines.
The conclusion then was that the
most practical and cost-effective
layout was for six seats abreast on two
decks in a double-bubble fuselage.
Initially, the Rolls-Royce Conway,
which powered the existing VC10,
was being considered but BAC
engineers were soon eyeing the
RB141 Medway.This unit had been specifi ed for
the DH121, which was abandoned
in its original form in favour of
the smaller airliner that ultimately
became the Hawker Siddeley Trident.
The Medway was eventually shelved
upon cancellation of the Hawker
Siddeley HS641 VTOL transport.
But it wasn’t before BOAC chairman
Rear Admiral Sir Matthew Slattery
had, in 1963, revealed plans for a
VC10 development with Medwayengines offering 10 per cent lower fuel
consumption than the Conways.
The Medway had also been
considered for a 235-seat Super
VC10 outlined in several versions:
a short-range, high-capacity variant
for British European Airways, a
long-range freighter for the RAF and
a double-decker with 265 seats. But
the Medway’s cancellation forced
BAC to turn to another of the engine
manufacturer’s projected turbofan
designs, the RB178 with its 5.7:1
bypass ratio.
The idea of a double-decker was
also gaining traction outside BAC. In
mid-1965 Flight reported: “There is
an intuitive feeling in high places in
both BOAC and BAC that another
semi-double-decker with a downstairs
lounge, like the Stratocruiser, could
make a big impact on air travel
and particularly the trans-Atlantic
market.”
BOAC was reported to have asked
BAC about a 200 to 250-seat stretch
of the Super VC10, which it wanted
by 1968. At the time Concorde
was dominating BOAC’s thinking,ABOVE:
BAC examined
several designs
for the proposed
double-decker,
as shown in
these general
arrangement
drawings. The fi rst
shows the ‘double-
bubble’ fuselage;
then come the
-300R with rear-
mounted engines,
the -300 A/F with
powerplants at the
rear in the form of
RB178 cores mated
to larger fans, and
the -300 U/W with
underwing power
units.38-47_AM_VICKERS_Sept17_cc C.indd 44 31/07/2017 13:28