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
1948 Gatow air disaster 1948 Gatow air disaster The 1948 Gatow air disaster was a mid-air collision in the airspace above Berlin, Germany that occurred on 5 April, sparking an international incident. A British European Airways (BEA) Vickers VC.1B Viking airliner crashed near RAF Gatow air base, after it collided with a Soviet Air Force Yakovlev Yak-3 fighter aircraft. All ten passengers and four crew on board the Viking were killed, as was the Soviet pilot. The disaster resulted in a diplomatic standoff between the United Kingdom and United States on one hand, and the Soviet Union on the other, and intensified distrust leading