Rolls-Royce Dart Rolls-Royce Dart The Rolls-Royce RB.53 Dart is a long-lived British turboprop engine designed, built and manufactured by Rolls-Royce Limited. First run in 1946, it powered the first Vickers Viscount maiden flight in 1948, and in the Viscount was the first turboprop engine to enter airline service, with British European Airways (BEA), in 1950. On 29 July 1948 a flight between Northolt and Paris–Le Bourget Airport with 14 paying passengers in a Dart-powered Viscount was the first scheduled airline flight by any turbine-powered aircraft. The Dart was still in production when the last Fokker F27 Friendships and Hawker Siddeley HS 748s
Vickers Valetta Vickers Valetta The Vickers Valetta is a British twin-engine military transport aircraft of the late 1940s. It was an all-metal mid-wing monoplane with a tailwheel undercarriage. The Valetta was a military transport development of the Viking civil airliner. The 58th Viking (c/n 158) became the prototype Valetta, which was first flown from Brooklands by test pilot Mutt Summers on 30 June 1947. The Valetta differed from the Viking fundamentally in being fitted with more powerful engines, a strengthened floor and large loading doors. Although named after the Maltese capital Valletta, the aircraft name is spelt with only one "l". The