Vickers-Armstrong
The Vickers corporation, founded as the Vickers company in 1828, was a British manufacturer, primarily of military equipment.
Land armaments
Vickers produced the Vickers machine gun, lovingly remembered by thousands of British machine gunners. The company was also known for its tank designs, starting with the widely used Vickers 6-Ton. Another famous design was the Valentine in World War II. In more recent years Vickers' main tank product was the Challenger II.
Aviation
Vickers produced one of the first aircraft designed to carry a machine gun, the Vickers Gunbus. It also built the first aircraft to cross the Atlantic Ocean non-stop, a converted World War I RAF Vickers Vimy bomber. (See 1919 in aviation.)
It was a pioneer in producing airliners, early examples being converted from Vimy bombers, and went on to manufacture the piston-engined Viking airliner and Varsity military crew trainer, the Viscount and Vanguard turboprop airliners, and the stylish though noisy VC-10 jet airliner, which remains in RAF service as an aerial refuelling tanker. The Valiant V bomber was another Vickers design. The company later shifted its focus to military vehicles and weapons.
Corporate change
1955 saw the separation of the company, then named Vickers-Armstrongs, into three groups, including Vickers aircraft and Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering Ltd. The aircraft design and manufacturing parts of Vickers were merged with the Bristol, English Electric and Hunting aircraft firms into the British Aircraft Corporation in 1960.
The 1990s saw Vickers Shipbuilding enter a period of diversification, notably with the £340m ($609m) acquisition of Ulstein, the Norwegian shipbuilding group in December 1998. Vickers had already acquired the Swedish ship engineering company Kamewa in 1986.
Acquisition
Vickers was acquired by Rolls-Royce plc in 1999 for £576m ($1.03Bn.) The marine propulsion portfolio of Vickers made it particularly suited to Rolls-Royce, transforming the group into the global leader in marine power systems.
In 2002 Vickers Defence Systems (which excluded the marine business) was bought by Alvis plc, and became a subsidiary, Alvis Vickers Ltd. In March 2004 the board of Alvis plc approved a £309m takeover bid by a direct competitor in the field of military vehicles, General Dynamics of the U.S. However, on June 4, 2004 BAE SYSTEMS outbid the American company, offering £355m, following which the board withdrew its recommendation in favour of the General Dynamics bid. BAE already owned almost twenty-nine percent of Alvis Vickers, and its last minute bid was seen as an attempt to prevent a strong rival from gaining a significant foothold in its home market. Following regulatory and majority shareholder approval the BAE offer was declared uncondional on 17th August.
In fiction
The role of Vickers Armstrong in the Chaco War is parodied as Viking Arms Co. Limited in Tintin's comic-book The Broken Ear.
See also
Basil Zaharoff
