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John Alcock and Arthur Whitten-Brown flew a Vickers Vimy Mk IV, flying between sea level and 12,000 feet with an average speed of 118 miles per hour. It took them 16 hours to fly 19,000 miles from Newfoundland to land in a bog near Clifden, Ireland. The Vimy was badly damaged, but the two pilots were uninjured. This original Vimy is now in the London Science Museum. In the same year, the Australian government offered another £10,000 for the first all-Australian crew to fly an aeroplane from England to Australia in less than 720 hours. Keith and Ross Macpherson Smith, along with two mechanics, successfully flew a Vickers Vimy from London to Darwin.

The Vickers Vimy went on to form the RAF’s main heavy bomber force for most of the 1920s.

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