The Austin Whippet was a British single-seat light aircraft designed and built by the Austin Motor Company just after the

First World War 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 ...

. It was a small single-seat biplane, intended to be an inexpensive aircraft for the amateur private pilot, and a small number were built before Austin abandoned aircraft production.

Development and design

In 1919, John Kenworthy, chief designer of the motor manufacturer Austin Motor Company, (who had built large numbers of aircraft under license during the First World War) designed a small single-seater light aircraft in order to cash in on an expected boom in private flying. The resulting aircraft, named the Austin Whippet, was a small single-seat biplane of mixed construction, with a fabric covered steel tube fuselage, and single-bay, folding wooden wings. The wings avoided the need for rigging wires by use of streamlined steel lift struts.Jackson 1974, p.89.''Flight'' 15 July 1920, pp. 751-752. The first prototype, powered by a two-cylinder horizontally opposed engine,''Flight'' 14 August 1919, pp.1076-1078. flew in 1919, receiving its

Airworthiness Certificate A standard certificate of airworthiness is a permit for commercial passenger or cargo operation, issued for an aircraft by the civil aviation authority in the state/nation in which the aircraft is registered. For other aircraft such as crop-spraye ...

in December that year. Production aircraft were powered by a six-cylinder

Anzani Anzani was an engine manufacturer founded by the Italian Alessandro Anzani (1877–1956), which produced proprietary engines for aircraft, cars, boats, and motorcycles in factories in Britain, France and Italy. Overview From his native Italy, An ...

air-cooled radial, and four more aircraft followed before Austin abandoned aircraft production in 1920, when it realised that the postwar depression was severely limiting aircraft sales.Gunston 2005, p.36.

Operational history

Of the five aircraft built, two were sold to

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

, while another was sent by its purchaser to

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

. One of the New Zealand aircraft, serial AU.4/''ZK-ACR'', remained in existence at Kai Iwi in the 1940s.Jackson 1974, pp.89-90. An accurate replica of Whippet K-158 is currently on display at the Aeroventure South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum in Doncaster, UK. A Replica K.158/BAPC.207 South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum at Doncaster.

Specifications

Notes

References

*
The Austin "Whippet"
. ''

Flight Flight or flying is the process by which an object moves through a space without contacting any planetary surface, either within an atmosphere (i.e. air flight or aviation) or through the vacuum of outer space (i.e. spaceflight). This can be a ...

'', 14 August 1919. Vol. XI, no. 33, pp. 1076–1078. Technical description with photographs and scale drawings. *
The Olympia Aero Show 1920
. ''Flight'', 15 July 1920. pp. 749–780. * Gunston, Bill. ''World Encyclopedia of Aircraft Manufacturers'', Stroud, UK: Sutton Publishing, 2nd edition, 2005. . *Jackson, A.J. ''British Civil Aircraft since 1919: Volume I''. London:Putnam, 1974. .

External links

Austin Memories: Aircraft Production
{{Austin aircraft 1910s British sport aircraft

Whippet The Whippet is a dog breed of medium size. It is a sighthound breed that originated in England, descended from the Greyhound. Whippets today still strongly resemble a smaller Greyhound. Part of the hound group, Whippets have relatively few ...

Single-engined tractor aircraft Biplanes Aircraft first flown in 1919