Villiers Projects and Prototypes

[Apophenia]

... (I am always sceptical when people use a journal as a serious source for designations or anything technical. IME they are rather consistently near the lowest quality in terms of technical accuracy. It is unavoidable since they are usually not tech educated and have to write about just about anything and pretend to know the subject. Ofc in >90% of cases they don't.)

Too true. And this 'Villiers Type-VII IIA' garbling is a perfect example.

In some other cases with trade publications, writers may also being limited by official style guides (I'm mainly thinking of Flight way back in the day). A writer might be fully aware that the manufacturer calls a particular machine a 'Thingie 23' but if that writer doesn't change the designation to 'Thingie XXIII', the copy editor will.