Hawker Siddeley Trident 1978, 117 Tridents had been produced. BEA's successor British Airways withdrew its Tridents by the mid-1980s. Trident services ended in China in the early 1990s. In 1953, as British European Airways (BEA) introduced the world's first turboprop-powered civil airliner – the Vickers Viscount – into passenger service, the operator was already considering what would be required of a potential successor. Following the entry into service of jet airliners in 1952, many airline managers and economists remained sceptical and advocated turboprop airliners as replacements of piston-engined airliners. In 1953, while several manufacturers across the world were investing in pure jet-powered aircraft,
Vickers-Armstrongs part of BAC) the VC10 jet airliner, which was used in RAF service as an aerial refuelling tanker until 2013. Vickers-Armstrongs was one of the few British manufacturers of marine diesel engines, notably for Royal Navy S, T-class and Estonian Kalev class submarines during World War II. In "The Adventures of Tintin" comic "The Broken Ear", the role of Vickers-Armstrongs in the Chaco War is parodied as "Viking Arms Co. Limited". A handgun described in a trial of Walter Mitty's alter ego is a 50 caliber Webley-Vickers revolver. Vickers-Armstrongs Vickers-Armstrongs Limited was a British engineering conglomerate formed by the merger