The Short S.36 was a British two-seat

tractor A tractor is an engineering vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort (or torque) at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery such as that used in agriculture, mining or construction. Most common ...

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 ...

, built by

Short Brothers Short Brothers plc, usually referred to as Shorts or Short, is an aerospace company based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Shorts was founded in 1908 in London, and was the first company in the world to make production aeroplanes. It was particu ...

for

Francis McClean Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Francis Kennedy McClean, (1 February 1876 – 11 August 1955) was a British civil engineer and pioneer aviator. Sir Francis was one of the founding members of the Royal Aero Club and one of the founders of naval aviatio ...

in 1911. It was later developed into the

Short S.41 The Short S.41 was a British single-engined biplane built for the Royal Navy in 1912. Capable of being operated either on wheels or floats, it was successful enough for a further two similar aircraft to be built, with the type remaining in us ...

and

Short S.45 The Short S.45 — also known as the Short T.5 after its naval serial number — was a training biplane built for Britain's Royal Navy by Short Brothers in 1912. It was the forerunner of another three identical aircraft (designated S.48, S.49, ...

, which were the first of a long series of similar aircraft built for the

RNAS The Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) was the air arm of the Royal Navy, under the direction of the Admiralty's Air Department, and existed formally from 1 July 1914 to 1 April 1918, when it was merged with the British Army's Royal Flying Corps t ...

and

RFC RFC may refer to: Computing * Request for Comments, a memorandum on Internet standards * Request for change, change management * Remote Function Call, in SAP computer systems * Rhye's and Fall of Civilization, a modification for Sid Meier's Civ ...

Design and development

The origination of a

biplane design was due to

Cecil Grace Cecil Stanley Grace (1880 – 22 December 1910) was a pioneer aviator who went missing on a flight across the English Channel in 1910. Family Grace was born in Chile, the son of John William Grace of New York. His uncle was W. R. Grace, a ...

, who had flown a Blériot tractor

monoplane A monoplane is a fixed-wing aircraft configuration with a single mainplane, in contrast to a biplane or other types of multiplanes, which have multiple planes. A monoplane has inherently the highest efficiency and lowest drag of any wing confi ...

Blackpool Blackpool is a seaside resort in Lancashire, England. Located on the North West England, northwest coast of England, it is the main settlement within the Borough of Blackpool, borough also called Blackpool. The town is by the Irish Sea, betw ...

in 1910. Work was begun on a tractor version of the S.27 biplane design powered by a E.N.V. Type F, but after Grace's death at the end of the year the project was shelved, the aircraft being completed as a Type S.27. However, when

Frank McClean Frank McClean FRS, FRAS (13 November 1837 – 8 November 1904) was a British astronomer and pioneer of objective prism spectrography. Life His father was the engineer J. R. McClean, FRS. Graduating from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1859, Fra ...

was later shown the design by

Horace Short Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his '' ...

, he asked for one to be built for him, to be powered by a

Gnome Gamma The Gnome 7 Gamma was a French designed, seven-cylinder, air-cooled rotary aero engine. Powering several pre-World War I era aircraft types it produced 70 horsepower (52 kW) from its capacity of 12 litres (680 cubic inches ...

engine. As first built, the aircraft was an unequal-span two-seater two-bay biplane, with

ailerons An aileron (French for "little wing" or "fin") is a hinged flight control surface usually forming part of the trailing edge of each wing of a fixed-wing aircraft. Ailerons are used in pairs to control the aircraft in Flight dynamics, roll (or ...

fitted to the top wing only. The square section

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 t ...

was mounted in the middle of the gap between the upper and lower wings, and the tail surfaces consisted of a rectangular rudder mounted on the

sternpost A sternpost is the upright structural member or post at the stern of a (generally wooden) ship or a boat, to which are attached the transoms and the rearmost left corner part of the stern. The sternpost may either be completely vertical or may ...

of the fuselage, with a rectangular horizontal stabiliser and split

elevator An elevator or lift is a wire rope, cable-assisted, hydraulic cylinder-assisted, or roller-track assisted machine that vertically transports people or freight between floors, levels, or deck (building), decks of a building, watercraft, ...

mounted in front of it on top of the fuselage. The centre section of the lower wing was left uncovered, as was the fuselage aft of the cockpit: the cockpit section of the fuselage was covered with

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 ...

, with

aluminium Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. I ...

panels at the front enclosing the fuel tanks and extending forwards to form the

cowling A cowling is the removable covering of a vehicle's engine, most often found on automobiles, motorcycles, airplanes, and on outboard boat motors. On airplanes, cowlings are used to reduce drag and to cool the engine. On boats, cowlings are a cove ...

for the front-mounted

Gnome Lambda The Gnome 7 Lambda was a French designed, seven-cylinder, air-cooled rotary aero engine that was produced under license in Britain and Germany. Powering several World War I-era aircraft types it was claimed to produce from its capacity of al ...

engine. The undercarriage consisted of a pair of wheels below the wing leading edge, supplemented by skids extending forward to protect the propeller in case of a nose-over, and a single sprung tailskid mounted under the rear of the fuselage. The fuselage was subsequently rigged lower down, and the aft section of the fuselage covered with fabric.

Service history

The aircraft was first flown by McClean on 10 January 1912, and performed well, having a short takeoff run and a speed of . McClean lent the aircraft to the Naval Flying School at Eastchurch, and on 11 March a flight lasting four hours was made at Eastchurch by Lieut. A.M. Longmore with a mechanic as passenger, landing because the engine was beginning to lose power: there was enough fuel for a further 2 1/2 hours flight,"Royal Aero Club Flying Ground, Eastchurch"
''Flight'' 16 March 1912 winning the

Mortimer Singer Prize Sir Adam Mortimer Singer, KBE, JP (25 July 1863 – 24 June 1929) was an Anglo-American landowner, philanthropist, and sportsman. He was one of the earliest pilots in both France and the United Kingdom. Childhood and family Singer was born in ...

for naval officers. The

Admiralty Admiralty most often refers to: *Admiralty, Hong Kong *Admiralty (United Kingdom), military department in command of the Royal Navy from 1707 to 1964 *The rank of admiral *Admiralty law Admiralty can also refer to: Buildings * Admiralty, Traf ...

was sufficiently impressed by the aircraft to order two similar aircraft to be built, these becoming the Gnome Double Omega-powered

and the

-powered

Specifications

References

{{Short Brothers aircraft 1910s British experimental aircraft S.36 Biplanes Rotary-engined aircraft Aircraft first flown in 1912