Armstrong Whitworth Apollo Armstrong Whitworth Apollo The Armstrong Whitworth AW.55 Apollo was a 1940s British four-engine turboprop airliner built by Armstrong Whitworth at Baginton. The aircraft was in competition with the Vickers Viscount but was beset with engine problems and only two were built. The requirement resulted from the Brabazon Committee's Type II design, calling for a small, medium-range pressurized aircraft to fly its less-travelled routes which became Air Ministry Specification C.16/46 for an aircraft able to carry 24-30 passengers over 1,000 mi (1,610 km) at a cruising speed of . The resulting design was the AW.55 Apollo, a low-wing cantilever monoplane with
British Aircraft Corporation operational today as Bristol Cars. Most of the BAC designs were taken over from the individual companies that formed it. BAC did not apply its new identity retrospectively, hence the VC10 remained the Vickers VC10. Instead the company applied its name to marketing initiatives, the VC10 advertising carried the name "Vickers-Armstrongs (Aircraft) Limited, a member company of the British Aircraft Corporation". The first model to bear the BAC name was the BAC One-Eleven (BAC 1–11), a Hunting Aircraft study, in 1961. Bristol had eschewed the subsonic airliner market and was working on the Bristol 223 supersonic transport, which was eventually