Vickers Vanguard Vickers Type 953C Merchantman

The Vickers Type 953C Merchantman is the freighter version of the Vanguard that British European Airways (BEA) obtained by converting passenger aircraft from its second batch, the Type 953. It never left the factory as such: it is a conversion. The Type 953 it started from was the BEA version that combined the engines of the Type 951 with the strengthened airframe of the Canadian Type 952; 14 were delivered in place of an order for 951s, mostly as 135-seat all-economy aircraft and some in the same 127-seat mixed-class layout as the 951. Sources agree that the nine Merchantmen came from that batch.

The logic was clear. The Vanguard had reached the market just as short-haul jets began to draw passengers away, and by the late 1960s BEA owned fairly young aircraft that the travelling public no longer preferred. Their wide cabin and "double-bubble" fuselage, with large underfloor holds, made them an ideal candidate for freighter conversion, as Flight International put it in 1996. Air Canada had already tried the idea in 1966 with a single converted Vanguard, the Cargoliner, but that aircraft kept its normal doors; the Merchantman was a different and more thorough programme.

The conversion added a large cargo door on the left side of the forward fuselage, measuring 139 by 80 inches (about 350 by 200 cm), and a strengthened cabin floor with rollers for palletised freight. The first two conversions were designed and carried out by Aviation Traders Engineering Ltd (ATEL) at Southend Airport; BEA modified the remainder at Heathrow using kits from ATEL. The first Merchantman flew on 10 October 1969 and was handed over to BEA on 29 November 1969, and BEA went on to operate all nine conversions as pure freighters. G-APEP shows the timeline: it first flew at Brooklands on 29 November 1961, joined BEA at Heathrow on 13 December 1961 under the name "Superb" and, after nine years carrying passengers, was converted into a Merchantman by BEA in 1969-1970.

When BEA was merged into British Airways in 1974, the new airline inherited nine Merchantman freighters together with three passenger Vanguards. British Airways soon began to sell them: in November 1976 it sold one to Air Bridge Carriers, a cargo airline based at East Midlands Airport, which went on to add further ex-BA aircraft. The Merchantmen stayed with British Airways until late 1979, when the remaining five were sold; G-APEP went to Air Bridge Carriers on 8 November 1979 and was stored at East Midlands before entering service. According to Flight International, the Air Bridge Vanguard/Merchantman fleet ultimately totalled seven aircraft.

Air Bridge Carriers changed its name to Hunting Cargo Airlines in 1992, to reflect its connection with the parent Hunting Aviation. Its Merchantmen carried individual names: G-APEJ was "Ajax", G-APEP "Superb" and G-APES "Swiftsure". G-APEP even flew with temporary stalls fitted inside, carrying up to 18 racehorses. The fleet shrank steadily: G-APEJ made its last flight on 24 December 1992 and G-APES on 4 February 1995. By 1994 Hunting had just two Vanguards in operation and was by then the sole operator of the type; in early 1995 G-APEP became the world's last airworthy Merchantman.

Hunting Cargo operated the last commercial V953C flight on 30 September 1996. Hunting donated the aircraft, G-APEP, to Brooklands Museum, where it landed on its final flight on 17 October 1996, returning to the airfield where every Vanguard had been built. It is the only intact Vanguard in existence. Of two other Merchantmen only the nose sections survive: G-APEJ "Ajax", displayed inside the Stratosphere Chamber at the same Brooklands Museum in Surrey, and G-APES "Swiftsure", at the East Midlands Aeropark.

With a freighter career of almost three decades, longer than the passenger lives of many of its airframes, the Merchantman was the way the Vanguard outlived the arrival of the jet. The captured sources do not give the freighter version's own payload or a complete list of the registrations converted.