Vickers 131 Valiant
The Vickers Type 131 Valiant was a British general-purpose biplane produced by Vickers in 1927, with the intention of replacing the Royal Air Force's Airco DH.9As, but was unsuccessful, with only a single example built, which was sold to Chile. Development and design In 1926, based on experience with the wooden-winged Vickers Vixen biplane, where the wings proved vulnerable to extremes of temperature and humidity, designed a set of metal wings for the Vixen, with which it became the Vickers Vivid, and in parallel, designed an all-metal general purpose biplane, the Vickers Type 131, hoping to replace the DH.9A in that role. In 1927, the British Air Ministry issued Specification 26/27 for a DH.9A replacement which, to save money, had to use as many components of the DH.9A as possible because the RAF held large stocks of DH.9A spares. Vickers submitted the Type 131 design to the Ministry but, as it did not make use of the required DH9A components, did not receive a contract for a prototype. However Vickers decided to build a single prototype as a private venture for evaluation against the specification. The Vickers 131 Valiant was a single-bay biplane of all-metal construction, sharing much of the