Vickers' Insane Futuristic Do-It-All Jet Aircraft: Vickers Swallow

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Hey everyone, how's it going? Today I want to talk a little bit about post-war experimentation following the end of the Second World War, the combination of there not being a massive war. Now the technological advancements made in the pursuit of war and all of the data being collected and shared from the defeated powers led to a boom in the advancement of aviation. And after Germany's defeat in particular, the information and technology they either elected not to destroy or didn't get the chance to destroy ended up being majorly beneficial and influential for other global powers. Perhaps most notably and infamously is something like Operation Paperclip, where more than 1,500 German scientists and engineers, many of whom worked for the German government, were immigrated to the United States to be employed by various military and scientific companies and entities. People like Verer von Brawn were key figures in, for example, America landing on the moon. But it wasn't just people that got brought over from Germany. Technical documents and technology alike too made their way to Allied nations. And one such technology is known as variable sweep wings. Also known as a swing wing. These wings are basically exactly what they sound like.

[00:01:32]They move to alter the degree at which they are swept connected to the fuselage with a pivot point. While aircraft with some form of variable sweep did technically exist before World War II Germany, it was Germany and their measures P101 that served as the effective pioneer of the concept as we know it. This mostly finished prototype and documentation on it was found and seized towards the end of the European theater by French and American forces. After the war ended, the P101 was packed up and shipped over to mainland America and given to Bell Aircraft to study as they were pretty heavily involved in experimental and research aircraft at the time. And their studying of this design led directly to the Bell X5, the first aircraft that could change the angle of its wings midflight.

[00:02:34]Now, in the pre-war and World War II eras, having such technology was largely pointless. But as jet engines rose to prominence and speeds approached the sound barrier, research, much of which was also conducted by Germany, led engineers to the realization that having swept wings is more efficient for higher speed flight. But this benefit also came at the cost of poor lift and control at lower speeds. This generally wasn't a problem with wings that were only slightly swept, but as speeds grew and grew and the sweep angles grew with them, the negative effects at lower speeds became more pronounced, which led to greater interest in the concept of variable sweep wings. with more and more prototypes and projects appearing in the 1950s and actual production models appearing in the 60s and 70s. Our subject for today is one of the earlier projects, but it was a hell of a concept that if successful could have been a technological marvel that possibly could rival some of the aircraft we have today. This is a prospective airliner slashf fighter slashbomber slash probably anything else. This is the vicer's swallow.

[00:04:01]Its story begins with a man by the name of Barnes Wallace, an aviation engineer who served in the Second World War as a designer and engineer, where he spearheaded the infamous bouncing bomb project that saw these cylindrical drum bombs spinning and bouncing along the water being used to destroy dams in German controlled regions. After the war ended, Barnes continued working as the head of the vicer's research and development department. And two particular areas he was interested in were laminer flow wings and variable sweep wings. This interest leading to a research paper titled the application of the aerodynamic properties to the stabilization and control of aerodines.

[00:04:55]This paper along with his own personal work in designing and launching smallcale drones that used swing wings, laminer flow, tailless designs, or some combination of the three theorized that some combination of these elements would revolutionize high-speed longd distance flight. after the proposed supersonic Miles M52 project was cancelled in 1946.

[00:05:23]And of note here, the M52 was actually to be constructed by Vickers. A chunk of the money that was awarded for that project. A chunk of over 500 million pounds was repurposed for work by Barnes for work on swing wing aircraft. This work would commence under the official designation of Wild Goose. The Wild Goose project would begin scaling up Barnes's designs, creating larger and larger swingwing gliders and remote controlled aircraft being launched from the ground via rocket or some form of catapult system. Kind of similar to the catapults used on aircraft carriers.

[00:06:09]These aircraft were met with mild levels of success due to the radio control systems and the rather unorthodox designs. It took years of work and testing before flights could really even be attempted. And even when they were finally attempted, it took multiple tries to even get one off the ground and an additional try still to sufficiently control it and land it. The first few models would crash on takeoff and the first to actually take to the air in January 1950 crashed on landing. A failure of the pilot that was remote controlling it, which honestly I kind of feel for that guy. You know, I've been to places where people fly remotec controlled aircraft and I've seen people lose control and spike them into the ground. But after this failure, the next model successfully took off and successfully landed and was able to be reused for testing for several years before it was eventually slammed into a wall. Sometime as the project was progressing, Barnes and Vickers's data would be used for a prospective missile known as the Green Lizard. This project would be a missile with swept wings that would deploy somewhere during the flight, likely just after the missile was deployed. And it was proposed to be an airto ground missile, an air-to-air missile, and/or a sort of anti-bomber aerial carpet bombing missile where it would fly over enemy formations and disperse bomblelets over the formation.

[00:07:52]kind of like the missile was akin to birdshot from a shotgun. However, British military interest in the Green Lizard dried up sometime in the early 1950s, but Barnes's interest in the swing wing did not dry up. And as work on the wild goose and green lizard projects were progressing, Barnes decided to increase the scale of his swingwing aircraft to a manned aircraft, contracting H aircraft to design the JC9.

[00:08:28]Measuring in at 14.17 me long, 11.58 m wide, and 2.5 m tall, the JC9 was a rather bizarrel looking ice cream cone-shaped aircraft with a rounded bulbous tail with just a vertical surface that would extend forward up into the nose to a point. The cockpit would rest around the midpoints of the plane just in front of the slightly swept back wings that presumably would have the ability to vary their sweep. I say presumably the ability because for some reason the JC9 never flew. And it is at least speculated that Barnes didn't actually even want to make this thing in the first place. Allegedly, Barnes did not want to have any of his prototype models be manned as the bouncing bomb projects led to soldier deaths both in combat and in testing.

[00:09:29]And he didn't want any accidental deaths in the testing, but it is not known if this had any role in the fact that the JC9 didn't fly. It was constructed peacemeal and shipped over to an airfield for testing, but for whatever reason, it was just never put together, and it sat around for a while before all the pieces were scrapped. Possibly a reason that it never flew was that Barnes moved on to bigger and more futuristic looking projects. And around 1954, Barnes and Vickers got wind of a British military aircraft specification for a new supersonic bomber and recon aircraft. Vickers was not initially part of the contest. They just found out about it and decided to throw their hat into the ring with Barnes's radical ideas. And his idea was something that he called the Swallow. The swallow would go through multiple iterations in its relatively short life, but in the initial design, measuring in at 20.95 m long with the wings tucked in, 22.86 m wide with the wings at their widest, or 9.37 m wide with the wings tucked in, and some unknown height. The Swallow was a futuristic looking flying V of an aircraft that would look futuristic even today. And the way it was designed to function would also be pretty futuristic. With a crew of just one to two held within a cockpit at the center of the triangular arrowheadshaped fuselage, the Swallow would not have a conventional way of controlling itself, nor would it have a conventional propulsion setup. Instead of having conventional control surfaces like elevators, ailerons or rudders, instead the idea was for the swallow that the entire wing would move and be the control surface and the varying sweep angle was part of that. Either at the pivot point where the varying sweep would occur or somewhere slightly further up, the wings would be able to move vertically to some degree as well.

[00:11:51]Now, would this have any marked benefit over more conventional control surfaces?

[00:11:56]I'm not terribly sure, but it would be really, really cool. Powering the Sparrow would be a group of four engines, four Bristol jet engines, possibly the Bristol Orpheus. Two of them on each wing. On each wing, one engine was placed on top, one below towards the tip. And through some kind of control system, whether it be some automated system or directly pilot controlled system, the engines could pivot side to side and also up and down, giving the plane extra control about the axes that would typically be controlled by elevators and the like. Again, would there really be any benefit to this? I'm not sure, but it is still really cool.

[00:12:44]Offensively, as a bomber, the payload would be pretty light at around 2,000 pounds, and it being the nuclear age, that payload would be a nuclear bomb released from the rear of the fuselage.

[00:12:59]Additionally, there were plans to use the Sparrow as a fighter, the exact same model here. And at least offensively, the only major difference was that instead of a bomb in the trunk, some missiles would be held under fuselage.

[00:13:15]Regardless of its role as a bomber or a fighter, the gross weight of this swallow was estimated to sit at around 30,000 lb. And the top speed was estimated to be around Mach 2 to Mach 2.5.

[00:13:31]Additionally, Barnes was seemingly very gung-ho about this design and would propose a much larger version of it that would have three different roles, a transport, a long range bomber, and a civilian airliner. This version measuring in at 48.76 m long with the wings tucked in, 53 m wide with the wings at their widest, or 21.79 m with the wings tucked in, and again some unknown height. This swallow was more than twice the size of the other version, and it had a redesigned fuselage to fit in with its different roles. For holding more fuel, larger payloads or passengers, the arrowheadshaped fuselage, specifically the shaft of the arrow head, was made longer, and the cockpit was relocated from around the center to more towards the nose. And behind the cockpit that would now hold a larger crew of four people could be held upwards of 25,000 lb of cargo or explosives or upwards of 60 passengers. Powered by four jet engines. These engines being more than twice as strong as the smaller versions engines. And with a gross weight of 150,000 lbs, the estimated top speed was still upwards of Mach 2.5.

[00:15:02]In its airliner role, Barnes seemed to believe that it would be able to fly nonstop from Britain to Australia on a single fill of its fuel tank. on a flight that would take about 10 hours compared to airliners today that take about 17 hours for a similar flight.

[00:15:23]While Barnes was clearly pretty confident in this design and small model work in the mid 1950s allegedly confirmed the validity of the concept.

[00:15:34]The British government by 1957 was very much not sold on it. In 1957, Minister of Defense Duncan Sandies published a white paper on the future of the British military, where combat was headed, and how British military companies should reorganize and shift priorities, moving away from manned aircraft and high alitude long range bombers and the like and move towards missile defense systems and ballistic missiles. This proposed shift was taken quite seriously by the British military and parliament and as a result numerous projects saw their funding vanish from bombers to fighters and everything in between. And one of those projects now without funding was the swallow. And the project effectively died then and there because of a single paper.

[00:16:34]However, Barnes still wasn't ready to give up, though, and decided to bring the swallow to the Americans, and this began a relatively short-lived joint venture with NASA. Unfortunately for Barnes, though, NASA's research and studying of the Swallow found issues with higher thanex expected drag and potential pitch up issues. And because of these issues, American interest in the Swallow died as well. And with that, the Swallow concept was officially dead.

[00:17:09]So sadly, pass some really cool looking model designs and drawings and smallcale test aircraft, the Swallow never came to fruition. And one of the most interesting designs of the era never came to fruition. But in this case, it wasn't because the design was without merit, but rather because global military philosophy was changing and moving away from something like the swallow. It wasn't because it was a bad design. It was because missiles were the more enticing option right now. And in a way, maybe that's something that Barn should have really liked because if he at least allegedly didn't want to make a test aircraft manned because it risked the life of the pilot, weapons moving to being unmanned should have been his favorite thing ever. But was it actually though? Who knows?

[00:18:08]All right, and with that, we're going to go ahead and end for today. So, thank you all for watching. Remember to like, comment, and subscribe. So, the other day I was at a GameStop and I was looking at cards because they sell more cards now and because of scalpers and whatnot, it's kind of amazing to see how much they're selling them for. For example, Yu-Gi-Oh, which isn't really being hit by scalpers yet, a box that I see all the time at Target for like $20, they're selling it for $90 purely so scalpers don't go there like they line up at Targets and Walmarts and the like.

[00:18:46]It's kind of wild to watch. But anyway, I hope you enjoyed the video and I hope you learned something. So, see you