Short Folder is a generic name often applied to several different Short Brothers' aircraft types designed and built prior to and during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. Short Brothers 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 folding wing mechanisms for ship-borne aircraft from

1913 Events January * January 5 – First Balkan War: Battle of Lemnos (1913), Battle of Lemnos – Greek admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis forces the Turkish fleet to retreat to its base within the Dardanelles, from which it will not ven ...

; the wings were hinged so that they folded back horizontally alongside the fuselage (as shown in the image), reducing the storage space required for stowing them aboard ship. Shorts produced many "folder" aircraft; in addition large numbers of Shorts' designs were produced by other companies, including Brush Electrical Engineering Co. Ltd., Robey & Co. Ltd., J Samuel White, Frederick Sage & Co. Ltd., S E Saunders Limited, Phoenix Dynamo Manufacturing Company,

Supermarine Aviation Works Ltd. Supermarine was a British aircraft manufacturer that is most famous for producing the Supermarine Spitfire, Spitfire fighter plane during World War II as well as a range of seaplanes and flying boats, and a series of Jet engine, jet-powered figh ...

, Mann, Egerton & Co. Ltd. and

Westland Aircraft Works Ltd. Westland Aircraft was a British aircraft manufacturer located in Yeovil, Somerset. Formed as a separate company by separation from Petters Limited just before the start of the Second World War, Westland had been building aircraft since 1915. Du ...

Short Folders saw service in many theatres of World War I, notably in the

Cuxhaven Raid The Raid on Cuxhaven (german: link=no, Weihnachtsangriff, Christmas Raid) was a British ship-based Airstrike, air-raid on the Imperial German Navy at Cuxhaven mounted on Christmas Day, 1914. Aircraft of the Royal Naval Air Service were carried ...

in 1914, in the

Dardanelles The Dardanelles (; tr, Çanakkale Boğazı, lit=Strait of Çanakkale, el, Δαρδανέλλια, translit=Dardanéllia), also known as the Strait of Gallipoli from the Gallipoli peninsula or from Classical Antiquity as the Hellespont (; ...

and in the disabling of the SMS ''Königsberg'' in East Africa in July 1915. The theatres of war served by the various "folders" ranged from the Arctic Circle through the Mediterranean and Africa to Mesopotamia, although the engines of the time did not perform ideally in hot climates and elevated altitudes. After World War I, most were retired, although some remained in service with the Greek Navy into the 1920s and with the

Estonian Air Force The Estonian Air Force ( et, Õhuvägi, ) is the aviation branch of the Estonian Defence Forces. The air force traces its history to 1918, and was re-established in its current form in 1991. As of 2016, the Estonian Air Force has a strength of ...

into the 1930s.

Short Brothers First World War folding-aircraft types

(approximate numbers produced in brackets) * Short S.41 type - experimental prototype (3) * Short S.63 type - reconnaissance seaplane (4) *

Short Type 81 The Short Admiralty Type 81 was a series of British two-seat floatplanes built prior to the First World War, and used by the Royal Naval Air Service in the early years of the war. They were powered by Gnome Lambda-Lambda 14 cylinder two-row ...

- reconnaissance/bombing/torpedo-carrying seaplane (5) * Short Type 166 - reconnaissance/bombing seaplane (26) *

Short Type 184 The Short Admiralty Type 184, often called the Short 225 after the power rating of the engine first fitted, was a British two-seat reconnaissance, bombing and torpedo carrying folding-wing seaplane designed by Horace Short of Short Brothers. It ...

- reconnaissance/bombing/torpedo-carrying seaplane (936) * Short Bomber - long-range landplane bomber (83) *

Short Type 827 The Short Type 827 was a 1910s British two-seat reconnaissance floatplane. It was also known as the Short Admiralty Type 827. Design and development The Short Type 827 was a two-bay biplane with unswept unequal-span wings, a slightly smaller ...

- reconnaissance/bombing seaplane (108) * Short Type 830 - reconnaissance/bombing seaplane (18) *

Short 310 The Short Type 320, also known as the Short Admiralty Type 320, was a British two-seat reconnaissance, bombing and torpedo-carrying "folder" seaplane of the First World War. Design and development The Short Type 320 was designed to meet an off ...

- reconnaissance seaplane/torpedo bomber (128) * Type 320 - reconnaissance seaplane/torpedo bomber (127) Eight modified Type 830s were produced with a different engine (100 hp Gnome-Monosoupapes instead of the 135 hp Salmson engines)Barnes and James,p.102

Later Short Brothers folding-aircraft types

(year of first flight in brackets) * Short N1B Shirl - shipborne torpedo-bomber (1919) *

Short Sporting Type The Short Sporting Type Seaplane was a single-engined biplane seaplane which first flew in 1919, Shorts' first post-World War I aircraft.Barnes & James 1989, p.159. Originally designed to a Royal Air Force (RAF) specification issued during the ...

- commercial biplane floatplane (1919) * Short SA.1 Sturgeon - prototype anti-submarine aircraft (1946) * Short SB.6 Seamew - anti-submarine aircraft (1953)

References

External links

Short Folder Seaplanes at flyingmachines.ru
{{Short Brothers aircraft 1910s British military reconnaissance aircraft Floatplanes Biplanes Folder