The Short Sporting Type Seaplane was a single-engined

biplane A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two main wings stacked one above the other. The first powered, controlled aeroplane to fly, the Wright Flyer, used a biplane wing arrangement, as did many aircraft in the early years of aviation. While a ...

seaplane A seaplane is a powered fixed-wing aircraft capable of takeoff, taking off and water landing, landing (alighting) on water.Gunston, "The Cambridge Aerospace Dictionary", 2009. Seaplanes are usually divided into two categories based on their tec ...

which first flew in 1919, Shorts' first post- World War I aircraft.Barnes & James 1989, p.159. Originally designed to a

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) a ...

(RAF) specification issued during the war for two training seaplanes, three aircraft were produced as a commercial venture. Only the first was sold, the other two being cannibalised for parts and then scrapped in 1924. This design is often referred to as the Short Shrimp although this name was applied only to the first Sporting Type.

Design

The Sporting Type was designed to meet RAF specification number RAF XXXII. It was a four-seat, single-engined biplane with twin wooden floats mounted on wire-braced

strut A strut is a structural component commonly found in engineering, aeronautics, architecture and anatomy. Struts generally work by resisting longitudinal compression, but they may also serve in tension. Human anatomy Part of the functionality o ...

s below the

fuselage The fuselage (; from the French ''fuselé'' "spindle-shaped") is an aircraft's main body section. It holds crew, passengers, or cargo. In single-engine aircraft, it will usually contain an engine as well, although in some amphibious aircraft ...

. It had two

cockpit A cockpit or flight deck is the area, usually near the front of an aircraft or spacecraft, from which a pilot controls the aircraft. The cockpit of an aircraft contains flight instruments on an instrument panel, and the controls that ena ...

s, the forward cockpit for the pilot and a passenger sitting in tandem, the other for two passengers sitting abreast; the rear cockpit could also function as cargo room, increasing the aircraft's operational flexibility. The

was of semi-

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plywood Plywood is a material manufactured from thin layers or "plies" of wood veneer that are glued together with adjacent layers having their wood grain rotated up to 90 degrees to one another. It is an engineered wood from the family of manufactured ...

construction with a fabric fairing. The upper and lower wings were of equal span and chord; on the first aircraft (named ''Shrimp'') the lower wing had a slight dihedral, while the upper wing was flat. On the two later aircraft, both wings had equal dihedral. All three were fitted with folding wingsBarnes & James 1989, p.161. (which Shorts had developed and

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...

ed in the years 1913 -1915). In plan view, the twin-mainfloats, like those of the Short N.2B, were square-fronted with a slight increase in beam from front to rear, while the stern tapered to a point like a mitred arch. They had a concave bottom (the edges were protected by metal strips''Flight'' Magazine, Olympia report 1920, p.798.) and a sharp step at approximately 3/4 length; a tailfloat was fitted to the fuselage below the conventional tailplane. Attached to the rear of the tailfloat was a taxying rudder, with an additional drop-plate which improved steering on water, and which, thanks to the hinged mounting at the forward end, would rise up into its recess in the tailfloat on contact with the ground when beaching. Wingtip floats were deemed unnecessary. A detail drawing, which appeared in ''Flight'' Magazine in 1920, showed the empennage and tailfloat assembly, including the hinged rudder drop-plate.''Flight'' Magazine, Olympia report 1920, p.796. There was also provision for the attachment of beaching wheels: Each float had a watertight transverse tube, to which a mainwheel could be fitted, and there was a socket for a detachable swivelling tailwheel at the rear of the tailfloat, just forward of the taxying rudder. A side view photograph of the Sporting Type (taken at Olympia in July 1920), showing the port beaching-wheel in place, was published in ''Flight'' Magazine.''Flight'' Magazine, Olympia report 1920, p.797.

Development

The first of the three Sporting Types, (''Shrimp''), was powered by a

Beardmore 160 hp The Beardmore 160 hp is a British six-cylinder, water-cooled aero engine that first ran in 1916, it was built by Arrol-Johnston and Crossley Motors for William Beardmore and Company as a development of the Beardmore 120 hp, itself a licens ...

(119 kW) engine. Registered G-EAPZ, it was first flown on 10 December, 1919 by test pilot J.L. Parker.Barnes & James 1989, p.160. Shortly afterwards it was bought by the Australian Lebbeus Hordern, who learned to fly in it. Having had the Beardmore engine replaced by the 230 hp (172 kW)

Siddeley Puma The Siddeley Puma was a British aero engine developed towards the end of World War I and produced by Siddeley-Deasy. The first engines left the production lines of Siddeley-Deasy in Coventry in August 1917, production continued until December ...

, he shipped it to Australia in 1921, where it was reregistered as G-AUPZ in June 1922 (later VH-UPZ). The ''Shrimp'' was used in two surveys of the coast of New Guinea, during which a film was made which was later shown in the UK under the name "Pearls and Savages". It crashed in Sidney Harbour in January 1923 and was written off. The two further Sporting Types remained unnamed. The second was fitted first with the Puma engine and flew for the first time on 28-07-1920, after having been displayed in the same month at London's Olympia exhibition centre. It was found by Parker to have greater lateral stability than the ''Shrimp'', due to the dihedral on both wings. Following an accident in September of the same year, the Puma was replaced by a 300 hp (224 kW)

Hispano-Suiza Hispano-Suiza () is a Spanish automotive–engineering company. It was founded in 1904 by Marc Birkigt and Damian Mateu as an automobile manufacturer and eventually had several factories in Spain and France that produced luxury cars, aircraft en ...

engine. The third aircraft, which first flew on 21-01-1921, was fitted with the Puma engine. Neither aircraft was sold and both were taken out of service and cannibalised for engines and instruments before being scrapped in 1924.Barnes & James 1989, p.162.

Specifications (with Siddeley Puma engine)

References

Notes

Bibliography