During the interwar period the Vimy set several records for long-distance flights, the most celebrated and significant of these being the first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, performed by John Alcock and Arthur Brown in June 1919.

[1] On 30 November 1917 the first prototype, flown by Captain Gordon Bell, made its maiden flight from Royal Flying Corps Station Joyce Green, Kent.

Reportedly, the F.B.27 quickly made a positive impression: it was able to take off with a greater payload than the Handley Page O/400 despite having about half the effective engine power.

[8] The second prototype was powered by a pair of Sunbeam Maori engines, which were found to have an unreliable cooling system during initial testing at Joyce Green.

[8] It was powered by a pair of 400 hp (300 kW) Fiat A.12 engines, and had a redesigned nose section and nacelles which were similar to production aircraft.

Aside from being powered by the Eagle engine, it was identical to the earlier prototypes except for having a greatly increased fuel capacity and reshaped and enlarged rudders.

[11] Production continued after the signing of the Armistice of 11 November 1918, which led to Vickers ultimately completing 112 aircraft under wartime contracts.

[14] Production aircraft used several different types of engines, leading to various mark numbers being applied to the Vimy to distinguish between the emerging subtypes.

The Vimy was also used as an air ambulance for transporting wounded troops to medical facilities, while some examples were configured to perform record-breaking long-distance flights.

[18] The Vimy served as a front line bomber in the Middle East and in the United Kingdom from 1919 until 1925, by which point it had been replaced by the newer Vickers Virginia.

[20][18] The Vimy continued to be used in secondary roles, such as its use as a training aircraft; many were re-engined with Bristol Jupiter or Armstrong Siddeley Jaguar radial engines.

[21] The most significant of the Vimy's many pioneering flights was the first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, made by Alcock and Brown in June 1919.

"[27] Vickers Vimy Reserve in Northgate, a suburb of Adelaide, is named in honour of the place the plane landed on its return to South Australia in 1920.

[28] In 1920 Lieutenant Colonel Pierre van Ryneveld and Major Quintin Brand attempted the first England to South Africa flight.

[15] The Vimy Commercial was a civilian version with a larger-diameter fuselage (largely of spruce plywood), which was developed at and first flew from the Joyce Green airfield in Kent on 13 April 1919.

[25] The prototype entered the 1920 race to Cape Town; it left Brooklands on 24 January 1920 but crashed at Tabora, Tanganyika on 27 February.

[30] A Chinese order for 100 is particularly noteworthy; forty of the forty-three built were delivered to China, but most remained in their crates unused, and only seven were put into civilian use.

[33] During the war these bombers were initially highly successful due to the low-level bombing tactics used, with the air force chief-of-staff of the Zhili clique, General Zhao Buli (趙步壢) personally flying many of the missions.

However, on 17 September, returning from a successful bombing mission outside Shanhai Pass, General Zhao's aircraft was hit by ground fire from the Fengtian clique in the region of Nine Gates (Jiumenkou, 九門口) and had to make a forced landing.

Zhao made a successful escape back to his base, but the bombers subsequently flew at much higher altitude to avoid ground fire, which greatly reduced their bombing accuracy and effectiveness.

[33] After numerous battles between Chinese warlords, all of the aircraft fell into the hands of the Fengtian clique, forming its First Heavy Bomber Group.

In 1969 an airworthy Vimy replica (registered G-AWAU) was built by the Vintage Aircraft Flying Association at Brooklands; this was first flown by D. G. 'Dizzy' Addicott and Peter Hoar.

[39] A second flyable Vimy replica, NX71MY, was built in 1994 by an Australian-American team led by Lang Kidby and Peter McMillan, and this aircraft successfully recreated the three great pioneering Vimy flights: England to Australia flown by Lang Kidby and Peter McMillan (in 1994),[41] England to South Africa flown by Mark Rebholz and John LaNoue (1999) and in 2005, Alcock and Brown's 1919 Atlantic crossing was recreated by Steve Fossett and Mark Rebholz.

The aircraft was donated to Brooklands Museum in 2006 and was kept airworthy in order to commemorate the 90th anniversaries of the Transatlantic and Australian flights, then retired in late 2009.

Its final flight was made by John Dodd, Clive Edwards and Peter McMillan from Dunsfold to Brooklands on 15 November 2009 and four days later, in 18 hours, the aircraft was dismantled, transported the short distance to the museum and reassembled inside the main hangar by a dedicated volunteer team.

Two days later a special Brooklands Vimy Exhibition was officially opened by Peter McMillan, and this unique aircraft is now on public display there.