Auster aircraft
| Auster Aircraft Ltd | |
|---|---|
| legal form | Limited Company |
| founding | 1938 (as Taylorcraft Airplanes (England) Limited ) |
| resolution | 1960 |
| Seat | Rearsby, UK |
| Branch | Aircraft construction |
Auster Aircraft Limited was a British aircraft manufacturer. The company, which was founded in 1938 as Taylorcraft Airplanes (England) Limited , existed until 1962. The company was initially based in Thurmaston, later Rearsby, both in Leicestershire . The renaming of Taylorcraft Airplanes in Auster Aircraft took place on March 8, 1946. Only single-engine propeller planes were produced. The name oyster is derived from an Italian south wind and initially only served as a product name.
history
Taylorcraft Airplanes (England)
After Alexander Lance Wykes had acquired the license rights to the Taylor Young Model A from the Taylor Young Airplane Corporation on November 21, 1938 , he founded the Taylorcraft Aeroplanes (England) Limited and settled them in Thurmaston near Leicester . Wykes received by a set of drawings Taylor and apparatus for construction of the hull, together with a copy of the new Taylor Craft Models B . Compared to the Model A, this had a more powerful 50 hp engine. In England, the design was revised in accordance with British approval regulations and was given the designation Taylorcraft Plus C to distinguish it from the US models . Production started in the spring of 1939. Before the outbreak of the Second World War, 23 Plus Cs could still be delivered to civilian customers.
The eleventh airframe , completed in June 1939, was equipped with a more powerful 90 hp Cirrus engine and handed over to the RAF for testing as a liaison aircraft . The same engine was then used for the subsequent Taylorcraft Plus D , of which seven machines were manufactured between the end of 1939 and the beginning of 1940 but were no longer delivered to civilian users. When the war broke out, the Ministry of Aircraft Production declared Taylorcraft Airplanes a repair center for light aircraft. However, additional assemblies were also manufactured for other companies, such as ailerons for the Hawker Audax , vertical stabilizer parts for the Hawker Hurricane and wings for the de Havilland Tiger Moth .
As early as 1939, British Army officers demanded the procurement of their own artillery observation aircraft. In this context, Taylorcraft delivered the Plus D with the registration G-AFZJ (serial number 128) in December 1939 for testing in Salisbury to the School of Army Co-operation. Then the plane, now with camouflage, was also used in France in April and May 1940. For the same purpose, the army also tested a Stinson Model 105 Voyager at the same time . However, the Arpin A-1 , General Aircraft Cagnet and the Dutch Scheldemusch , which were also considered, did not reach France. The assessment of the suitability of the Plus D for the intended role was rather poor. Both the performance and the robustness of the construction were considered unsatisfactory.
The Stinson emerged as the clear winner from the comparison, according to which 100 machines were ordered in July 1940, of which only about 20 were actually shipped from the USA in the first year and reached England in poor condition. In addition, the Vigilant was finally declared too big for its intended purpose. The fact that 100 Taylorcraft Plus Ds were finally ordered at the end of 1941 was less due to their performance than to the lack of alternatives. The name Auster owes the aircraft to the Air Ministry's view that a letter designation is not sufficient. Icarus' first proposal was rejected after it was pointed out that Icarus could only make a single flight. Since contemporary aircraft often carried the names of winds (e.g. hurricane and whirlwind), the Roman name for a warm south wind was used with oyster . During the Second World War , in 1604 Taylorcraft oyster - high-wing aircraft for the armed forces of Great Britain and Canada.
During the war began Taylor 1943 with the construction of a purely civilian low-wing, the Taylor Craft Model L . Lance Wykes was based on the Auster IV and also used the same engine. However, according to the low-wing design, it provided a modified fuselage and shorter wings that were braced towards the fuselage. However, the work came to a sudden end after Wykes was killed in a plane crash in May 1944.
Auster aircraft
When the end of the war was foreseeable, Taylor began to develop concepts for future civil aircraft types. Two new designs were planned: a simple two-seater with an engine between 65 and 75 hp and a three-seater 100 hp airplane equipped with flaps. The latter project was the first to appear under the initial name Taylorcraft Auster VJ / 1 and represented the beginning of a new, long-continued development line. The name indicated the close relationship to Auster V, but became after the move to the Rearsby airfield and the company's name change to Auster Aircraft in March 1946, shortened to Auster J / 1 Autocrat . Over four hundred copies were sold to civilian and military customers.
The two-seat aircraft should roughly correspond to the pre-war Plus-C. A prototype (G-AGPS) was registered in July 1945 with a 65-hp Lycoming O-145. The cowling was cut out in the area of the cylinders and the exhaust system , so that the external impression came very close to that of the very first Taylorcraft machines. The model, regarded as underpowered, was given neither a model number nor a name and was used as a company aircraft until it was destroyed in a storm in March 1947. However, experience with the G-AGPS led directly to the J / 2 Arrow with a 75 HP Continental C75-12 engine, which had its maiden flight in the summer of 1946.
A 65 hp version of the J / 2 with a Continental C-65 was also planned, for which, in contrast to the Arrow, no tail wheel but a grinding spur was provided and should do without brakes. The name for the one built prototype, with the first flight in September 1946, was J / 3 Atom . Of the 44 Arrows built, only six were sold in England, the rest were exported to twelve countries, but mainly to Australia. When procurement difficulties for American engines arose again, a test installation of a 90 hp Blackburn Cirrus Minor I in an Arrow cell was carried out, similar to the procedure in the pre-war period. The result was the Auster J / 4 prototype G-AIGZ, which first flew in late 1946. This was followed by 27 series machines, 14 of which were exported.
When using the J / 1 in Australia, it quickly became apparent that the engine power was insufficient , especially under hot and high conditions. In 1947, for example, the J / 5 variant with a 130 PS de Havilland Gipsy Major I engine was presented. This machine, unofficially called "Gipsy Autocrat", was also primarily exported to Australia, where it was named Auster Adventurer . In Sidney, Kingsford Smith Aviation carried out final assembly and equipping with engines. Also in 1947 Auster presented the four-seater Model P Avis with a 145 HP Gipsy Major X engine and special ailerons, similar to those used on the Auster AOP.6 . Since the flight tests did not show satisfactory results, the prototype was dismantled again and used to build the successor Avis 2 , an ambulance aircraft. This model also remained a prototype, which crashed in August 1950 after an engine failure.
Financial problems led to a significant reduction in production numbers in 1948, after which Auster also turned to the manufacture of engine parts. As a result, a large number of Autocrat cells were stored in Rearsby, one of which was used to build the J / 1B Aiglet . Initially intended as an agricultural aircraft , the Aiglet was equipped with a Gipsy Major I engine and, compared to the J / 1, had an enlarged vertical stabilizer, a wind-powered pump and spray bars under the wings. The prototype was delivered to Aerial Spraying Contractors Ltd. in August 1950. delivered. Together with six other aiglets, he carried out insect control missions in Sudan until the end of 1953. As in the case of the J / 5, the majority of the 86 aiglets built were exported to Australia and New Zealand without engines.
Despite the same name, the Aiglet Trainer J / 5F, presented in June 1951 and produced in 80 copies, had little in common with the J / 1B. The J5 / F was a limited aerobatic training aircraft with two or four seats. Constructively, the fuselage and the Gipsy Major I engine of the J / 5 were combined with the vertical stabilizer of the Aiglet and a completely new wing was designed with a 1.22 m smaller wingspan. With the prototype G-AMKF, Ranald Porteous showed the aerobatic figure Porteous Loop for the first time at the Farnborough Air Show in 1951 , today mostly referred to as the Avalanche .
The only exception to the high - wing aircraft produced up to then were the low- wing agricultural aircraft of the Auster Agricola type , which were built in 1955/56. After Beagle Aircraft was founded in 1960, the high-deck design was continued with the Terrier and the Airedale equipped with a nose wheel landing gear . By 1960 the total production increased to over 3800 machines.
Beagle Aircraft
After the takeover by the Pressed Steel Company in 1960, the company was renamed Beagle-Auster Ltd. renamed. In 1962 the merger with Beagle-Miles Ltd. to the new Beagle Aircraft . The brand name Auster was used until 1968.
literature
- Mike Jerram: For business and pleasure - Part one . In: Airplane Monthly April 1987, pp. 188-191
- Mike Jerram: For business and pleasure - Part two . In: Airplane Monthly May 1987, pp. 274-276
- Mike Jerram: For business and pleasure - Part three . In: Airplane Monthly June 1987, pp. 328-330
- Mike Jerram: For business and pleasure - Part four . In: Airplane Monthly July 1987, pp. 386-389
- Mike Jerram: For business and pleasure - Part five . In: Airplane Monthly December 1987, pp. 670-674
- Mike Jerram: For business and pleasure - Part six . In: Airplane Monthly January 1988, pp. 54-57
- Hellmut Penner, Frank Herzog: Piper Cub , Motorbuch Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-613-03603-1
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mike Jerram: For business and pleasure - Part three . In: Airplane Monthly June 1987, p. 330
- ^ Extract from the Taylorcraft production list
- ^ Biography Ranald Porteous ( Memento from October 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive )