Short Brothers (aircraft manufacturer)

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Short Brothers , shorts for short , was a British aircraft manufacturer whose successor is currently located in Belfast . Shorts is considered the first aircraft company in the world. In the period between the two world wars, Short also temporarily manufactured automobiles, automobile bodies and trolleybus chassis. During the Second World War , Shorts was a major manufacturer of flying boats . After the war the company switched to the production of cargo planes . The company was bought in 1989 by the Canadian group Bombardier and renamed Bombardier Shorts .

Aircraft production

Pioneering years

The foundation stone for the company was laid in 1897 when Eustace (1875-1932) and Oswald Short (1883-1970) made their first flight in a gas balloon . They began offering balloons for sale in 1902, and in 1905 they signed a contract with the British Indian Army for the delivery of three. They were joined by their brother Horace (1872-1917) in 1908 and they started a company to sell licensed replicas of the Wright Flyer , which they made in Battersea , southwest London . In July 1909 they opened Shellbeach airfield on unobstructed marshland on the Isle of Sheppey in the Thames Estuary . It was also home to the Royal Aero Club , and they sold six Wright Flyers to the club over the next two years.

In 1910 they moved with the Aero Club to nearby Eastchurch and built their first aircraft, the Short-Dunne 5 , the world's first aircraft with swept wings. In 1911 they built the world's first twin-engine airplane, the S.39 or Triple Twin . In the following years Shorts built a large number of different aircraft and expanded after the outbreak of World War I with the production of the Short Admiralty Type 184 (also Short S.184). This became the first type of aircraft to sink a ship when a S.184 launched by a British warship hit a Turkish cargo ship during the Battle of Gallipoli in the Dardanelles . The S.185 was also sold to the Royal Flying Corps as a short bomber .

Era of flying boats

During the 1920s and 30s, the only option for civil long-haul flights was the flying boat , because the necessary infrastructure at airports was not yet available and would not have been profitable due to the small number of flights. Shorts turned to the flying boat market and produced a range of three models that came to be known as the Singapore . A Singapore I became famous in 1927 when Sir Alan Cobham took his wife and crew on a sightseeing flight over Africa, during which they covered around 37,000 kilometers.

Shorts then began developing one of their most famous models, the Calcutta . It was based on the Singapore , but was bigger and more powerful. The Calcutta flew for the first time in 1928 and was used commercially by Imperial Airways from August of the same year . Two more copies were delivered in April 1929 and flew the coastal route preferred by passengers from Genoa via Rome , Naples , Corfu and Athens to Alexandria . Some Calcuttas were used on shorter routes, others made long-haul flights between the outer reaches of the British Empire . The Calcutta was followed by the larger Kent , and other, even larger models.

The company soon grew too big for the Eastchurch facility and moved to nearby Rochester in 1933 . In 1934 it was bought by the engine manufacturer Pobjoy Airmotors , with whom they had worked for a long time. In 1936 the Air Ministry founded a new aircraft factory in Belfast , in which Shorts and the Harland & Wolff shipyard each held 50 percent and Short and Harland Ltd. was called. The new company's first product was 189 Handley Page Hereford bombers.

The work on seaplanes culminated in the development of the Short Sunderland , a large long-range flying boat. The civil version of Sandringham was used as a commercial aircraft on transatlantic flights.

Second World War

The Sunderland achieved greater fame as an anti -submarine patrol during World War II, with its long range and flight duration allowing the gap between Iceland and Greenland to be closed. You thereby contributed to ending the Battle of the Atlantic in favor of the Allies .

The Sunderland it was that the Short Brothers to order for the Short Stirling helped, the first four-engine bombers in Britain. If one had stayed with the original design, which was essentially a land-based Sunderland adapted for military use , it would likely have become an effective heavy bomber. Instead, the Air Ministry made numerous bizarre requirements that eventually ruined the design, while newer, more powerful models from other manufacturers emerged.

During the Battle of Britain , the Rochester factory was massively bombed several times by the German Air Force , and some early Stirlings and other aircraft were destroyed, as was a Supermarine Spitfires factory a few miles away . From then on, the Belfast factory gained importance as it was well beyond the range of German bombers. In 1943 the British government temporarily took control of the company and has now fully merged it with Harland to become Short Brothers and Harland Ltd. was called.

After 1945

Production was concentrated in Belfast until 1947 and all other wartime factories closed, and in 1948 the administration also moved. Belfast was from now on the sole company headquarters.

An SC.7 Skyvan at Oulu Airport , Finland.

In the 1960s, Shorts found a niche in the market with short-haul cargo aircraft and manufactured the Short Skyvan . The Skyvan had a characteristic box-like exterior with a double tail fin, but also good flight characteristics (except in crosswinds) and a high payload . Although it had to share a market segment with the famous de Havilland Twin Otter , it was very successful because of its large loading hatch in the stern, as it made it easy to load even the most bulky items of cargo. Skyvans are still in operation today, for example in the Canadian Arctic .

From 1953 the company also became a pioneer in the development of electronic analog computers . These were needed to cope with the increasingly complex aerodynamic calculations. With them, functions could be calculated which could be given as solutions of certain differential equations . Later it was also marketed industrially under the name General Purpose Analogue Computer . The machine had a housing with slide-in computing units, registration camera and programming field. I.a. one of the computers was procured in 1957 by Horst Herrmann for the Technical University of Braunschweig .

1964 saw the maiden flight of the massive Short SC.5 Belfast military transport , of which only ten were built for the Royal Air Force .

In the 1970s, Short & Harland Ltd. entered the market for feeder aircraft with the Skyvan- based Short 330 , which is called the C-23 Sherpa in the USAF , and later with the more conventional and slightly more streamlined Short 360 . In 1977 the company changed its name back to Short Brothers and became a public limited company in 1984 when the British government sold its remaining shares.

In 1989 Short Brothers was bought by the Canadian aviation group Bombardier and eventually lost its identity as an independent company. In 1993, Bombardier Shorts and Thomson-CSF formed a joint venture , Shorts Missile Systems , to develop very short-range anti-aircraft missiles for the UK Department of Defense . In 2000, Thomson-CSF bought Bombardier's 50 percent stake and became the sole owner. Shorts Missile Systems was renamed Thales Air Defense Limited in 2001 .

Aircraft types

The year of the first flight is in brackets.

1900-1909

1910-1919

1920-1929

1930-1939

1940-1949

Short SA6 Sealand (ex G-AKLS, ex YU-CFK) in the Aircraft Museum in Belgrade

1950-1959

1960 - today

Airships

Guided missiles

Automobiles and automobile bodies

In 1921 and 1922 Short briefly manufactured his own automobile. However, the project was taken over by a partner company at an early stage. At the same time, Short began manufacturing automobile and bus bodies. It lasted until the 1930s.

Automobile manufacturer

Short Bros. produced a light vehicle under the name Short-Ashby from 1921 , as Ashby Motors Ltd. was involved in the company and took it over entirely in 1922. The car had a four-cylinder in-line engine with 1.0 l displacement and was built on a chassis with a 2,350 mm wheelbase and 1,029 mm track width.

Models

model Construction period cylinder Displacement wheelbase
1921-1922 4 row 969 cc 2350 mm

Body shop

In 1921 Short Bros. built a large factory in Rochester with the aim of mass producing automobile bodies there. The company received its first order from the French car manufacturer Salmson . Short equipped the Salmson 10 hp with standardized superstructures. The connection existed at least until 1925. In addition, bodies for Chrysler and Fiat chassis were built at Short .

Since the mid-1920s, Short had been involved in the manufacture of bus bodies to a considerable extent. This line of business existed at least until 1934.

Trolleybuses

In 1909, the Railless Electric Traction Company was founded in London with the aim of marketing the trolleybus technology developed by Siemens in England as well. During the First World War, the missing German parts made it difficult to sell the system, so that the company had to file for bankruptcy in 1916. The company was taken over by Shorts and from then on operated under the name Railless Ltd. , RET Company Ltd. and Railless Electric Traction Construction Co. Ltd. The chassis of the vehicles were built by Shorts, the superstructures came from other manufacturers such as Roe .

literature

  • CH Barnes, Derek James: Shorts Aircraft since 1900 . Putnam. 1989, ISBN 0-85177-819-4 .
  • David Culshaw, Peter Horrobin: The Complete Catalog of British Cars 1895-1975 . Veloce Publishing, Dorchester 1999, ISBN 1-874105-93-6 .
  • James Taylor: AZ of British Bus Bodies. Crowood Press, 2013, ISBN 978-1-84797-639-0 .
  • Nick Walker: A – Z of British Coachbuilders 1919–1960 . Herridge & Sons, Beaworthy 2007, ISBN 978-0-9549981-6-5 .

Web links

Commons : Short Brothers  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Shorts Quarterly Review. Vol. 2, No. 3, Autumn 1953, p. 1.
  2. ^ Jörg Munzel: The development of computer science at the TU Braunschweig. In: W. Kertz (Ed.): Technical University of Braunschweig: from the Collegium Carolinum to the Technical University. Olms, Hildesheim 1995, pp. 701-709.
  3. ^ A b Nick Walker: AZ of British Coachbuilders 1919-1960. Herridge & Sons, Beaworthy 2007, ISBN 978-0-9549981-6-5 , p. 172.
  4. ↑ Illustration of the factory facilities on the website www.britainfromabove.org.uk (aerial photo) (accessed on July 22, 2015).