The Austin Whippet was a British single-seat light aircraft that was designed and built by the

Austin Motor Company The Austin Motor Company Limited was a British manufacturer of motor vehicles, founded in 1905 by Herbert Austin, 1st Baron Austin, Herbert Austin in Longbridge. In 1952 it was merged with Morris Motors, Morris Motors Limited in the new holdi ...

just after the

First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

. It was a small single-seat

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 ...

that was intended to be an inexpensive aircraft for the amateur private pilotwere. Five were built, after which Austin abandoned aircraft production.

Development and design

In 1919, John Kenworthy, chief designer of the motor manufacturer

, (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

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-spray ...

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, ...

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 () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

, while another was sent by its purchaser to

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

. 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. A Whippet replica, marked as the first example, K-158, later G-EAGS, is currently on display at the

South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum The South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum (SYAM) is a volunteer-led museum located at Lakeside in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, England. It occupies the former site of the Royal Air Force Station, RAF Doncaster. The museum occupies the last remaining o ...

Doncaster Doncaster ( ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city in South Yorkshire, England. Named after the River Don, Yorkshire, River Don, it is the administrative centre of the City of Doncaster metropolitan borough, and is the second largest se ...

, UK.

Specifications

Notes

References

*
The Austin "Whippet"
. ''

Flight Flight or flying is the motion (physics), motion of an Physical object, object through an atmosphere, or through the vacuum of Outer space, space, without contacting any planetary surface. This can be achieved by generating aerodynamic lift ass ...

'', 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 British breed of dog of sighthound type. It closely resembles the Greyhound and the smaller Italian Greyhound, and is intermediate between them in size. In the nineteenth century it was sometimes called "the poor man's raceh ...

Single-engined tractor aircraft Biplanes Aircraft first flown in 1919