Bristol Siddeley Viper 203

The Viper turbojet was originally designed by the then Armstrong Siddeley Motors as a short life, expendable, turbojet for the Australian Jindivik pilotless target aircraft.

It was later developed to have an extended life and has been used on a large number of aircraft built all over the world, proving particularly popular for trainers and light attack aircraft and for executive jets.

The Viper Mark 203 is a special version adapted for use as a booster in the Avro Shackleton MR Mk.3 Phase 3 maritime patrol aircraft. Two Vipers were fitted, one in the rear of each of the outer engine nacelles, and were used to augment the four Griffon piston engines for take-off and overshoots.

The Vipers were adapted to run on the same high octane petrol (AVGAS) as the Griffons instead of the normal kerosene but even so they had a life between overhauls of only 350 hours

This exhibit has been kindly lent by the University of Southampton Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

The Southampton Hall of Aviation (Solent Sky) relies on visitor attendance and donations to keep the museum open. In this modern day rising costs are making this harder to achieve. Please help us keep the doors open by donating to our charity. Every penny helps, simply use the Paypal link to donate via your credit card, you do not need to have a Paypal account to do this. Thank you.