WORLD'S FIRST VERTICAL TAKE-OFF AIRLINER.—The Fairey Rotodyne, the world’s first vertical take-off airliner, designed to carry up to 48 passengers or 4½ tons of freight at nearly 200 miles an hour, making its first flight at White Waltham airfield, Berks, on November 6. The aircraft is essentially an orthodox twin-engined airliner, plus a 90ft diameter, four-blade rotor mounted well above the fuselage. It rises vertically as a helicopter, then, having gained height, flies horizontally as a normal fixed-wing airliner. It is powered by two Napier Eland propeller-turbines, while for take-off compressed air is piped through each blade of the rotor to small jet units at each tip. In these units the air mixes with burning fuel, and the resulting jet exhausts cause the blades to rotate.

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28434, 14 November 1957, Page 12

WORLD'S FIRST VERTICAL TAKE-OFF AIRLINER.—The Fairey Rotodyne, the world’s first vertical take-off airliner, designed to carry up to 48 passengers or 4½ tons of freight at nearly 200 miles an hour, making its first flight at White Waltham airfield, Berks, on November 6. The aircraft is essentially an orthodox twin-engined airliner, plus a 90ft diameter, four-blade rotor mounted well above the fuselage. It rises vertically as a helicopter, then, having gained height, flies horizontally as a normal fixed-wing airliner. It is powered by two Napier Eland propeller-turbines, while for take-off compressed air is piped through each blade of the rotor to small jet units at each tip. In these units the air mixes with burning fuel, and the resulting jet exhausts cause the blades to rotate.