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34-618: The Vickers Viking was a British single-engine amphibious aircraft designed for military use shortly after World War I . Later versions of the aircraft were known as the Vickers Vulture and Vickers Vanellus . Research on Vickers ' first amphibious aircraft type began in December 1918 with tests of alternative fuselage/hull designs occurring in an experimental tank at St Albans in Hertfordshire , England. A prototype, registered G-EAOV,

68-744: A Napier Lion engine. The next version was the Viking V ; two were built for the RAF for service in Iraq . A further development with a redesigned wing structure using the 450 hp (340 kW) Napier Lion would have been the Viking VI (Vickers designation Type 78 ) but known as the Vulture I . A second with a Rolls-Royce Eagle IX (360 hp, 270 kW) was the Type 95 Vulture II . Both Vultures were used for an unsuccessful around

102-445: A charter basis (including pleasure flights), provide scheduled service, or be operated by residents of the area for private, personal use. Floatplanes have often been derived from land-based aircraft, with fixed floats mounted under the fuselage instead of an undercarriage (featuring wheels). Floatplanes offer several advantages since the fuselage is not in contact with water, which simplifies production by not having to incorporate

136-502: A conventional land-based aircraft). However, in cases where this is not practical, amphibious floatplanes, such as the amphibious version of the DHC Otter , incorporate retractable wheels within their floats. Some amphibians are fitted with reinforced keels which act as skis, allowing them to land on snow or ice with their wheels up. Many amphibian aircraft are of the flying boat type. These aircraft, and those designed as floatplanes with

170-441: A conventional undercarriage. These are not built to take the impact of the aircraft landing on them. An amphibian can leave the water without anyone getting in the water to attach beaching wheels (or even having to have any handy), yet a fully functional undercarriage is heavy and impacts the aircraft's performance, and is not required in all cases, so an aircraft may be designed to carry its own. An occasional problem with amphibians

204-659: A future line of indigenous flying boats beginning with the Canadian Vickers Vedette . No Vikings survive today although a full-size replica built for the film The People That Time Forgot (1977) is displayed at Brooklands Museum in Surrey. Data from British Flying Boats General characteristics Performance Aircraft of comparable role, configuration, and era Related lists Amphibious aircraft Floatplanes often have floats that are interchangeable with wheeled landing gear (thereby producing

238-666: A longer range than comparable helicopters, and can achieve nearly the range of land-based aircraft, because an airplane's wing is more efficient than a helicopter's lifting rotor. This makes amphibious aircraft, such as the Grumman Albatross and the Shin Meiwa US-2 , useful for long-range air–sea rescue tasks. In addition, amphibious aircraft are particularly useful as bush planes that can engage in light transport in remote areas. In these areas, they often have to operate not only from airstrips, but from lakes and rivers as well. In

272-555: A runway. A common solution is to make them retractable, like those found on the Consolidated Catalina ; however, these are even heavier than fixed floats. Some aircraft may have the tip floats removed for extended use from land. Other amphibians, such as the Dornier Seastar , use stub wings, called sponsons , mounted with their own lower surfaces nearly even with the ventral "boat-hull"-shaped fuselage surface. This can provide

306-480: A single main float under the fuselage centerline (such as the Loening OL and Grumman J2F ), require outrigger floats to provide lateral stability so as to avoid dipping a wingtip, which can destroy an aircraft if it happens at speed, or can cause the wingtip to fill with water and sink if stationary. While these impose weight and drag, amphibious aircraft also face the possibility of these getting hit when operating from

340-521: A variety of roles. However, like the pure flying boat, they were made obsolete by helicopters which could operate in sea conditions far beyond what the best seaplane could manage. Development of amphibians was not limited to the United Kingdom and the United States. In any case, few designs saw more than limited service, as there was a widespread preference for pure flying boats and floatplanes, due to

374-420: Is directly attached to the fuselage, this being the strongest part of the aircraft structure, while the smaller floats under the outer wings provide the aircraft with lateral stability. By comparison, dual floats restrict handling, often to waves as little as one foot (0.3 metres) in height. However, twin float designs facilitate mooring and boarding , and – in the case of torpedo bombers – leave

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408-486: Is with ensuring that the wheels are in the correct position for landing. In normal operation, the pilot uses a checklist, verifying each item. Since amphibians can land with them up or down though, the pilot must take extra care to ensure that they are correct for the chosen landing place. Landing wheels-up on land may damage the keel (unless done on wet grass, a technique occasionally used by pilots of pure flying boats), while landing wheels-down on water will almost always flip

442-629: The Bering Sea G-EBGO crashed. Vickers salvaged a large proportion. The Viking Mark VII ("Type 83" in Vickers numbering) was a development of the Vulture, a three-seat open-cockpit fleet spotter to Air Ministry specification 46/22 given the service name "Vanellus" when taken on for evaluation by the RAF against the Supermarine Seagull design. The last Viking amphibians were built during 1923, but

476-652: The Cessna Caravan . Development of amphibians has continued into the new millennium. The ShinMaywa US-2 was developed in the 2000s in Japan for the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force . Floatplane A floatplane is a type of seaplane with one or more slender floats mounted under the fuselage to provide buoyancy . By contrast, a flying boat uses its fuselage for buoyancy. Either type of seaplane may also have landing gear suitable for land, making

510-406: The Consolidated Catalina (named for Santa Catalina Island off the coast of southern California, whose resort was popularized partly by the use of amphibians in the 1930s, including Sikorskys and Douglas Dolphins ) was redeveloped from being a pure flying boat into an amphibian during the war. After the war, the United States military ordered hundreds of the Grumman Albatross and its variants for

544-551: The United Kingdom , traditionally a maritime nation, a large number of amphibians were built between the wars, starting from 1918 with the Vickers Viking and the early 1920s Supermarine Seagull , and were used for exploration and military duties, including search and rescue, artillery spotting and anti-submarine patrol. These evolved throughout the interwar period to culminate in the post–World War II Supermarine Seagull , which

578-466: The 1920s and 1930s, most notably in the form of the Schneider Trophy , not least because water takeoffs permitted longer takeoff runs which allowed greater optimization for high speed compared to contemporary airfields. There are two basic configurations for the floats on floatplanes: The main advantage of the single float design is its capability for landings in rough water: a long central float

612-426: The aircraft upside down, causing substantial damage. Amphibious aircraft are heavier and slower, more complex and more expensive to purchase and operate than comparable landplanes. However, they are also more versatile. Even though they cannot hover or land vertically, they compete favorably with helicopters for some jobs and can do so at a significantly lower cost. Amphibious aircraft can also be much faster and have

646-645: The amphibian class in Air Ministry competitions held in September and October, 1920. The Type 54 Viking IV incorporated further refinements and had a wider cabin above a hull one foot wider, an example being G-EBBZ in which Ross Smith and J.M. Bennett (partners in the 1919 England to Australia flight ) died on 13 April 1922 just outside the Brooklands racetrack near Weybridge in Surrey . Most of these Mark IV Vikings had

680-463: The compromises necessary for water tightness, general impact strength and the hydroplaning characteristics needed for the aircraft to leave the water. Attaching floats to a landplane also allows for much larger production volumes to pay for the development and production of the small number of aircraft operated from the water. Additionally, on all but the largest seaplanes, floatplane wings usually offer more clearance over obstacles, such as docks, reducing

714-533: The demand is too small to justify the costs of development, with the Volmer Sportsman being a popular choice among the many offerings. With the increased availability of airstrips in remote communities, fewer amphibious aircraft are manufactured today than in the past, although a handful of amphibious aircraft are still produced, such as the Bombardier 415 , ICON A5 , and the amphibious-float–equipped version of

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748-458: The difficulty in loading while on the water. A typical single engine flying boat is unable to bring the hull alongside a dock for loading while most floatplanes are able to do so. Floats inevitably impose extra drag and weight, rendering floatplanes slower and less manoeuvrable during flight, with a slower rate of climb, than aircraft equipped with wheeled landing gear. Nevertheless, air races devoted to floatplanes attracted much attention during

782-506: The first Italian aircraft to fly. While most were not amphibians, quite a few were, including the Savoia-Marchetti S.56 A and the Piaggio P.136 . Amphibious aircraft have been particularly useful in the unforgiving terrain of Alaska and northern Canada , where many remain in civilian service, providing remote communities with vital links to the outside world. The Canadian Vickers Vedette

816-625: The larger flying boats could not go, and helping to popularize amphibians in the US. The Grumman Corporation, latecomers to the game, introduced a pair of light utility amphibious aircraft – the Goose and the Widgeon – during the late 1930s for the civilian market. However, their military potential could not be ignored, and many were ordered by the US Armed forces and their allies during World War II. Not coincidentally,

850-475: The more remote locations during the summer months when the only areas suitable for landing are the waterways. Despite the gains of amphibious floats, small flying-boat amphibians continued to be developed into the 1960s, with the Republic Seabee and Lake LA-4 series proving popular, though neither was a commercial success due to factors beyond their makers' control. Many today are homebuilts, by necessity as

884-667: The name was re-used for the twin-engine VC.1 Viking airliner some 22 years later, which saw service as the Valetta with the RAF and other air arms. Canadian Vickers Limited, a subsidiary company in Montreal with no previous aircraft manufacturing experience, assembled two Viking IV amphibians and built a further six for the Royal Canadian Air Force . Their involvement with the Viking led to

918-528: The needed stability, while floatplane amphibians usually avoid the problem by dividing their buoyancy requirements between two floats, much like a catamaran . Some non-amphibious seaplanes may be mistaken for amphibians (such as the Shin Meiwa PS-1 ) which carry their own beaching gear. Usually, this is a wheeled dolly or temporary set of wheels used to move a flying boat or floatplane from the water and allow it to be moved around on land. It can also appear as

952-492: The number of flying boats being built. However, many modern civilian aircraft have floatplane variants, most offered as third-party modifications under a supplemental type certificate (STC), although there are several aircraft manufacturers that build floatplanes from scratch. These floatplanes have found their niche as one type of bush plane , for light duty transportation to lakes and other remote areas as well as to small/hilly islands without proper airstrips. They may operate on

986-412: The vehicle an amphibious aircraft . British usage is to call floatplanes "seaplanes" rather than use the term "seaplane" to refer to both floatplanes and flying boats. Since World War II and the advent of helicopters, advanced aircraft carriers and land-based aircraft, military seaplanes have stopped being used. This, coupled with the increased availability of civilian airstrips, has greatly reduced

1020-606: The weight penalty the undercarriage imposed. Russia also developed a number of important flying boats, including the widely used pre-war Shavrov Sh-2 utility flying boat, and postwar the Beriev Be-12 anti-submarine and maritime patrol amphibian. Development of amphibians continues in Russia with the jet-engined Beriev Be-200 . Italy, bordering the Mediterranean and Adriatic , has had a long history of waterborne aircraft, going back to

1054-554: The world attempt in 1924 after the Eagle engine of the Vulture II was replaced with a Lion. With registration G-EBHO, the first set off from Calshot Seaplane Base on 25 March 1924, the other was shipped as a spare machine to Tokyo . After mechanical difficulties in earlier stages G-EBHO crashed at Akyab where it was replaced by G-EBGO on 25 June. Encountering heavy fog on the Siberian side of

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1088-655: Was a five-seat cabin biplane with a pusher propeller driven by a Rolls-Royce Falcon water-cooled V 12 engine. Sir John Alcock died taking this aircraft to the Paris exhibition on 18 December 1919, whilst trying to land at Côte d'Evrard, near Rouen , Normandy in foggy weather. The next example, G-EASC, known as the Viking II , had a greater wing span and a 360 hp Rolls-Royce Eagle VIII motor. The Viking III machine, piloted by Captain Stan Cockerell, won first prize in

1122-559: Was developed for forestry patrol in remote areas; a job that previously was done by canoe and took weeks could be accomplished in hours, revolutionizing forestry conservation. Although successful, flying-boat amphibians like the Vedette ultimately proved less versatile than floatplane amphibians and are no longer as common as they once were. Amphibious floats that could be attached to any aircraft were developed, turning any aircraft into an amphibian, and these continue to be essential for getting into

1156-552: Was to have replaced the wartime Walrus and the Sea Otter but was overtaken by advances in helicopters . From the mid-1920s to the late 1930s in the United States , Sikorsky produced an extensive family of amphibians (the S-34 , S-36 , S-38 , S-39 , S-41 , S-43 ) that were widely used for exploration and as airliners around the globe, helping pioneer many overseas air routes where

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