The Short SB.5 (
serial ''WG768'') was a "highly unorthodox, adjustable wing"
[Staples K.J.] British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
research aircraft designed 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 ...
in response to the
UK Air Ministry
The Air Ministry was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom with the responsibility of managing the affairs of the Royal Air Force, that existed from 1918 to 1964. It was under the political authority of the Secretary of State ...
requirement
In product development and process optimization, a requirement is a singular documented physical or functional need that a particular design, product or process aims to satisfy. It is commonly used in a formal sense in engineering design, includi ...
ER.100; to provide input for the design of the
English Electric P.1
The English Electric Lightning is a British fighter aircraft that served as an interceptor during the 1960s, the 1970s and into the late 1980s. It was capable of a top speed of above Mach 2. The Lightning was designed, developed, and manufac ...
(prototype of the English Electric Lightning) by testing the low speed flight characteristics of various configurations of wing-sweep required for supersonic flight. The
tailplane
A tailplane, also known as a horizontal stabiliser, is a small lifting surface located on the tail (empennage) behind the main lifting surfaces of a fixed-wing aircraft as well as other non-fixed-wing aircraft such as helicopters and gyroplane ...
could be mounted either on top of the fin ("T-tail") or below the fuselage. The tests ultimately confirmed that the original P.1/Lightning design was an effective configuration for high speed flight.
Design and development
A technical dispute arose between the Royal Aircraft Establishment and the
English Electric
N.º UIC: 9094 110 1449-3 (Takargo Rail)
The English Electric Company Limited (EE) was a British industrial manufacturer formed after the Armistice of 11 November 1918, armistice of World War I by amalgamating five businesses which, during th ...
Company (EEC) as to the optimum configuration for the company's proposed supersonic fighter. A single-seat, mid-winged research machine was built to investigate the low speed handling of the possible configurations. The same basic configuration of the P.1 was incorporated into a simpler testbed that had a fixed undercarriage.
[Winchester 2004, p. 149.] Since the SB5 was to test the low-speed flight characteristics, there was no requirement for the undercarriage to be retractable.
The contract was awarded to Short Brothers and Harland Ltd of Belfast on 2 August 1950. The machine was designed to allow three different wing sweep angles (50°, 60° and 69°). The sweep adjustment of the wings was made when the aircraft was on the ground. Two different tail plane positions (a) low on the rear fuselage and (b) on top of the fin, were also tested. "The complete rear fuselage, just aft of the engine, was detachable and two alternative rear fuselages were available, one with the tailplane set on top of the fin and the other with the tailplane set below the fuselage. The tailplane angle was adjustable in flight, being electrically actuated."
The wings were made "of plywood, except for light alloy sheeting at the leading and trailing edges,"
which restricted the maximimum speed to a modest 350 knots (403 mph; 649 km/h).
"Two 20 feet
.1 m
Tenth may refer to:
Numbers
* 10th, the ordinal form of the number ten
* One tenth, , or 0.1, a fraction, one part of a unit divided equally into ten parts.
** the SI prefix deci-
** tithe, a one-tenth part of something
* 1/10 of any unit of me ...
circumference brake parachutes and one 20 feet
.1 m
Tenth may refer to:
Numbers
* 10th, the ordinal form of the number ten
* One tenth, , or 0.1, a fraction, one part of a unit divided equally into ten parts.
** the SI prefix deci-
** tithe, a one-tenth part of something
* 1/10 of any unit of me ...
anti-spin parachute ... housed in the rear fuselage above the jet pipe."
The flight test report of the SB5 with 60 degrees of sweep and the tailplane in the lower position summarised the design criteria:
"At the time of the initial conception of the Short SB5 research aircraft (1949), it was recognised that the trend towards higher angles of sweepback was likely to continue, and this was emphasised by the existence of a design for an operational fighter aircraft, the English Electric P1 (Lightning), which was to have a sweepback of 60°. There was then no flight experience with wings of this amount of sweepback. The SB5 was designed to allow a gradual approach to this configuration, flying initially with 50° sweepback before conversion to 60° when it would resemble, aerodynamically, a seven-eighths scale model of the Lightning. To increase its usefulness as a research vehicle, the aircraft was capable of further modification to operate with 69° of wing sweepback."
[K. J. Staples, Flight Tests on the Short SB5 with 60 °and Low Tailplane Part I- Forces and Moments. p4]
Operational testing
![Short SB](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/Short_SB.5_WG768_8005M_28_ETPS_FINN_200969_edited-1.jpg)
Testing was conducted with increasing degrees of sweep and with the tailplane in both of its two possible positions. The first flight, with the sweep set to 50°, was made from
Boscombe Down
MoD Boscombe Down ' is the home of a military aircraft testing site, on the southeastern outskirts of the town of Amesbury, Wiltshire, England. The site is managed by QinetiQ, the private defence company created as part of the breakup of the Def ...
by the Chief Test Pilot of Shorts,
Tom Brooke-Smith on 2 December 1952. In 1953, he gave an impressive display of the SB5's maneuverability and speed at the
Society of British Aircraft Constructors
A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Socie ...
Air Display at
Farnborough.
In July
1953
Events
January
* January 6 – The Asian Socialist Conference opens in Rangoon, Burma.
* January 12 – Estonian émigrés found a Estonian government-in-exile, government-in-exile in Oslo.
* January 14
** Marshal Josip Broz Tito i ...
, the first test flights were carried out with the wing-sweep set to the intermediate angle of 60° and with the "T-tail." Testing with the lower tailplane position commenced in January 1954, so that flight-test feedback could be made available prior to the first flight of the P.1. It was eventually determined that the "T-tail" configuration was unsatisfactory. Testing in the 60° sweep configuration was completed in April 1958.
Before evaluating the final wing sweep configuration of 69°, a
Martin-Baker
Martin-Baker Aircraft Company Limited is a British manufacturer of ejection seats and safety-related equipment for aviation. The company's origins were originally as an aircraft manufacturer before becoming a pioneer in the field of ejection s ...
ejection seat was fitted for the first time and the
Rolls-Royce Derwent
The Rolls-Royce RB.37 Derwent is a 1940s British centrifugal compressor turbojet engine, the second Rolls-Royce jet engine to enter production. It was an improved version of the Rolls-Royce Welland, which itself was a renamed version of Fran ...
engine was changed for a
Bristol Orpheus of greater thrust.
The first flight, with the final sweep setting of 69° was made by Denis Tayler on 18 October 1960 at
RAE Bedford
RAE Bedford was a research site of the Royal Aircraft Establishment between 1946 and 1994. It was located near the village of Thurleigh, north of the town of Bedford in England and was the site of aircraft experimental development work.
In t ...
; this was, at the time, the greatest degree of wing-sweep in the world.
[
The experience gained with the SB5 validated the wing-sweep and low tailplane configuration adopted for the P.1, which was to become the English Electric Lightning.][Winchester 2004, p. 148.]
Over eleven months, the tests with 50° and 60° sweep were concluded with the high tail configuration. In January 1954, the low tail rear fuselage was fitted and tests continued for a further two years and proved that the EEC configuration was correct.
After completion of its test programme, the SB5 eventually joined the fleet of the Empire Test Pilots' School
The Empire Test Pilots' School (ETPS) is a British training school for test pilots and flight test engineers of fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft at MoD Boscombe Down in Wiltshire, England. It was established in 1943, the first of its type. T ...
(ETPS) at Farnborough in 1967, as is evidenced by the ETPS 25th Anniversary brochure in 1968. The Empire Test Pilots School flew the machine to give students experience in flight-testing "slender" aircraft.[RAF Museum]
Short Brothers SB5 WG768
The SB.5 is now on display in the RAF Museum
The Royal Air Force Museum is a museum dedicated to the Royal Air Force in the United Kingdom. The museum is a non-departmental public body of the Ministry of Defence and is a registered charity.
The museum is split into two separate sites:
* R ...
, Cosford in Shropshire (with both of its tails).
Operators
;
* Royal Aircraft Establishment
The Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) was a British research establishment, known by several different names during its history, that eventually came under the aegis of the Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom), UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), bef ...
Specifications (Short SB.5- 1952 configuration (high tail))
See also
Related development:
* English Electric Lightning
The English Electric Lightning is a British fighter aircraft that served as an interceptor during the 1960s, the 1970s and into the late 1980s. It was capable of a top speed of above Mach 2. The Lightning was designed, developed, and manufa ...
Comparable aircraft:
* Handley-Page HP.115
* Saab 210
The Saab 210 is an approximately 70% scale research prototype for the double- delta configuration of the Saab 35 Draken supersonic fighter. Although never officially named anything but Draken by Saab, it soon became known by its unofficial nicknam ...
Notes
Bibliography
*Buttler, Tony and Jean-Louis Delezenne. ''X-Planes of Europe: Secret Research Aircraft from the Golden Age 1946-1974''. Manchester, UK: Hikoki Publications, 2012.
* Staples, K.J.
"Tests on the Short SB5 with 60° and Low Tailplane - Part I- Forces and Moments"
'. London: Office of Public Sector Information HMSO
The Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) is the body responsible for the operation of His Majesty's Stationery Office (HMSO) and of other public information services of the United Kingdom. The OPSI is part of the National Archives of the Un ...
, 1969.
* Taylor, John W.R. ''Jane's Pocket Book of Research and Experimental Aircraft'', London, Macdonald and Jane's Publishers Ltd, 1976. .
*
* Winchester, Jim. ''X-Planes and Prototypes''. London: Amber Books Ltd., 2005. .
External links
British Aircraft Directory
->
RAF Museum website entry
a 1953 ''Flight'' article on the use of integral construction in an experimental SB.5 main spar box
{{Short Brothers aircraft
1950s British experimental aircraft
Short Brothers aircraft