AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 30 / 94

Plate 30 of 94 · Second World War · Medium bomber

Vickers Wellington

B.X, painted as MF628, a Vickers Wellington B.X built at Blackpool in 1944 with two Bristol Hercules radials and Barnes Wallis’s geodetic structure under its fabric, later converted as a T.10 navigation trainer and now displayed at RAF Museum Midlands, Cosford, painted as it is shown there: Dark Earth and Dark Green upper surfaces and upper fuselage sides over black sides, undersides, nose and fin, yellow-ringed roundels on the fuselage sides, red-leading fin flashes, ‘MF628’ in red below the fin, the glazed nose turret with its two guns, the rear turret removed and displayed beside the aircraft, bomb doors open, flaps lowered, cowl gills open and black three-blade propellers with yellow tips.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as MF628, a Vickers Wellington B.X built at Blackpool in 1944 with two Bristol Hercules radials and Barnes Wallis’s geodetic structure under its fabric, later converted as a T.10 navigation trainer and now displayed at RAF Museum Midlands, Cosford, painted as it is shown there: Dark Earth and Dark Green upper surfaces and upper fuselage sides over black sides, undersides, nose and fin, yellow-ringed roundels on the fuselage sides, red-leading fin flashes, ‘MF628’ in red below the fin, the glazed nose turret with its two guns, the rear turret removed and displayed beside the aircraft, bomb doors open, flaps lowered, cowl gills open and black three-blade propellers with yellow tips. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.1 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (IA/X); engine, crew and dimensions are for the B.X modelled here.

History

The Wellington

The Wellington was designed at Weybridge to Air Ministry specification B.9/32 for a twin-engined day bomber. Its structure came from Barnes Wallis, who had used geodetic construction on the R100 airship and the Wellesley bomber: a lattice of curved light-alloy members crossing each other in a basket weave, so that the loads in one member were balanced by those in its neighbours, all covered in doped fabric. The result was light, roomy and immensely strong. The prototype, K4049, first flew from Brooklands on 15 June 1936 with “Mutt” Summers at the controls, and the first production Wellington Is reached No. 9 Squadron in October 1938.

When war came the Wellington was the backbone of Bomber Command. Early daylight raids on German warships in December 1939 cost it heavily against fighters, and the command turned to bombing by night, where the Wellington carried most of the load until the four-engined heavies arrived in 1942. Crews trusted it because the geodetic structure could lose whole panels of fabric and many of its members and still hold together long enough to bring them home. It also served with Coastal Command, hunting U-boats with radar and a powerful searchlight, laid mines, and flew in the Middle East, Italy and the Far East long after it had left the main bomber force.

Vickers built Wellingtons at Weybridge, at Chester and at Blackpool, 11,461 in all, more than any other British bomber. The B.X, with Bristol Hercules engines and a stronger light-alloy structure, was the most numerous version, with 3,804 built. After the war many were converted into T.10 navigation trainers, with the nose turret removed and faired over, and the last of these retired from the RAF in 1953. Two Wellingtons survive complete: N2980, recovered from Loch Ness in 1985 and now at Brooklands, and MF628 at Cosford.

This airframe

Wellington B.X MF628

MF628The airframe modelled

MF628 was built by Vickers-Armstrongs at Blackpool and first flew there on 9 May 1944, and two days later it went into store at No. 18 Maintenance Unit at Tinwald Downs. It never flew on operations; in 1948 it was converted into a T.10 navigation trainer, losing its nose turret, and in 1954 it took part in the filming of The Dam Busters, mostly as a camera aircraft. Sold back to Vickers in 1955, it was presented to the Royal Aeronautical Society the next year and passed to the RAF Museum, which refitted a nose turret and displayed it at Hendon from 1972. Its fabric had decayed badly by 2010, when it moved to the conservation centre at Cosford to be re-covered in Irish linen, and it is now displayed at RAF Museum Midlands. The model shows it as it stands there: Dark Earth and Dark Green upper surfaces and upper fuselage sides over black sides, undersides, nose and fin, yellow-ringed roundels on the fuselage, fin flashes, “MF628” in red below the fin, the glazed nose turret with two guns, bomb doors open, flaps lowered, cowl gills open and black three-blade propellers with yellow tips. The museum displays the rear turret beside the aircraft rather than on it, so the model ends at the open turret position. No photograph looks down on the upper wing, so it is left without roundels.

See it at Royal Air Force Museum Midlands

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Wellington in 2 UK collections. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 94 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.