Armstrong Whitworth Apollo Department at RAE Farnborough. The aircraft fuselage was used at Farnborough for water tank pressure testing until it was scrapped in the 1970s. 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
Airliner delivered to the nascent airline, Aircraft Transport and Travel, which used the first aircraft for pleasure flying, and on 25 August 1919, it inaugurated the first scheduled international airline service from London to Paris. One aircraft was sold to the River Plate Aviation Company in Argentina, to operate a cross-river service between Buenos Aires and Montevideo. Meanwhile, the competing Vickers converted its successful WWI bomber, the Vickers Vimy, into a civilian version, the Vimy Commercial. It was redesigned with a larger-diameter fuselage (largely of spruce plywood), and first flew from the Joyce Green airfield in Kent on 13 April 1919.