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Shorts Aircraft Since 1900

Shorts Aircraft Since 1900

Ref: 4515

In stock

Price: £36.00

sadly, flyingbooks is now closed.

{detailed description}From the first spherical balloons made by Eustace and Oswald Short after visiting the Paris Exhibition in 1900, the author traces the brothers' progress as engineers to the Aero Club till Wilbur Wright's arrival in France in 1908 and their consequent change-over from balloons to aeroplanes —a decision heartily endorsed by their gifted eldest brother Horace, who joined them to set up the world's first aircraft production line.
Their rapid expansion as aircraft suppliers to the Royal Navy and their notable progress with deck-launching, folding wings, buoyancy bags, sprung floats and the first successful torpedo-carrying seaplane led to enormous production of the famous Short Type 184 at Rochester and elsewhere during World War I, in which period the firm also built rigid airships at Cardington.
After Horace's death in 1917, Oswald pioneered stressed-skin duralumin construction in a form which has lasted almost unchanged to the present day. His Silver Streak, shown at Olympia in 1920, was so far in advance of its contemporaries that he was begrudged a true assessment of its merit, until Sir Alan Cobham's flight round Africa in the Singapore I led to the adoption by Imperial Airways of the Calcutta, ancestor of the brilliantly conceived Empire Boat and its military counterpart the famous Sunderland.
Unbuilt projects are fully treated in their proper context and the post-1945 story of Rochester's last days and Northern Ireland's new industry is carried right up to the current service of the Belfast and Skyvan. More than half the photographs have never been published before and nine Appendices list all Shorts' constructor's numbers, serials and registration marks. The book contains specifications for all Short types and variants, and complete lists to date of type designations and preliminary designs. Its authenticity is guaranteed by the author's free access to both the company's archives and the memoirs and log-books of the late John Lankester Parker, O.B.E., and is endorsed by Mr Oswald Short himself.
Cover photo by CHARLES E. BROWN
{Author / Publisher / Date}by C. H. Barnes
1967 1st edn. 532pp
{condition}very good in edge worn d/j.
{delivery info}
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first class (1-2 days)£4.75
second class (2-3 days)£4.25


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