Vickers Type 253

The Vickers Type 253 was built to Air Ministry specification G.4/31 for a general purpose aircraft capable of carrying out level bombing, army co-operation, dive bombing, reconnaissance, casualty evacuation and torpedo bombing. The design is often also known as the Vickers G.4/31.

Although a conventional biplane design, the internal fuselage construction, designed by Vickers’ Chief Structural Engineer Barnes Wallis was a pre-cursor to the geodesic structure used on the later Wellington bomber.

The Type 253 won the competition for G.4/31 and Vickers was awarded a contract for 150 aircraft. However, Vickers had undertaken a private venture monoplane derivative, the Type 287. The monoplane was significantly superior to the biplane, resulting in the contract being cancelled and moved to the Type 287 instead. The Type 287 became the prototype for the Vickers Wellesley.