Short Brothers's floats

Short Brothers “Mussel” Floats as used by the DH60 Moth were / are 15′ long and 7′ 6″ centre to centre spacings.

The Short Brothers designed a number of floats for various seaplanes of their own or other’s designs.

They designed the floats for the various Supermarine and other British Schneider Trophy seaplanes.

Their greatest seaplane float development was in my view for the civilian DH60 series that continued on to the DH82 Queen Bee and Tiger Moth etc.

These were first developed for the Short Brothers Mussel aircraft and were hence known as Short Mussel floats.

Short Brothers S.7 Mussel (youtube.com)

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> From Wiki

The Short S.7 Mussel was a single-engined two-seat monoplane built by Short Brothers to test the performance of their duralumin monocoque floats. Two were built.

Development

Having demonstrated the watertightness and corrosion resistance of duralumin monocoque flying boat hulls with the Short Cockle, Shorts became leaders in the design of metal floats for seaplanes. The floats for both the Supermarine S.4 and Gloster III Schneider Cup seaplanes were built by Shorts.[1] They had built their own hydrodynamic testing canal at their Rochester base to explore the performance of floats on the water and decided to build a small aircraft to test them in flight.[1] This was the Short S.7 Mussel; the name was a natural complement to the Cockle but also a nod to “Mussel Manor”, the clubhouse on Shorts’ first airfield at Sheppey.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Mussel

There is a 3 pages Flight article, March 11, 1926
“DURALUMIN CONSTRUCTION ON ORIGINAL LINES
Some Impressions of a Visit to the Works of Short Brothers”
describing in some detail the work on floats and the test tank is shown in a photo.

Oh, well found that man – http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1926/1926%20-%200159.html

Interesting article. There’s also a bit of a description of the floats in this one, which i found at the same time:
http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1926/1926%20-%200220.html

And there is another book – part of Janes “Planemakers” series. Simply titled “Shorts” by Michael J H Taylor from 1984. ISBN 0710602375. Nothing on floats either but it does reproduce the sketch Horace Short made of the Wright flyer which led to the production of a batch of six license built aircraft. Anyway, it is off topic but a fascinating document. I saw it once at the RAeS. Amazing when things like that survive.

you and me both Pondskater!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’ll give you a lift when I go. 🙂

AllanK

[QUOTE=Pondskater;1864490]There is another book:
A Short History: A history of Short Bros Aircraft Activities in Kent 1908-1964. by J M Preston 1978.
Quite short 44 pages A4 format.

The section on floats is little more than a paragraph explaining how a decision in 1924 to build their own test tank lead to floats for various companies – and some Schneider Trophy racers.

There is a 3 pages Flight article, March 11, 1926
“DURALUMIN CONSTRUCTION ON ORIGINAL LINES
Some Impressions of a Visit to the Works of Short Brothers”
describing in some detail the work on floats and the test tank is shown in a photo.

`There’s a lot of stuff to catalogue but I can feel the need for a trip to Belfast.`

you and me both Pondskater!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There is another book:
A Short History: A history of Short Bros Aircraft Activities in Kent 1908-1964. by J M Preston 1978.
Quite short 44 pages A4 format.

The section on floats is little more than a paragraph explaining how a decision in 1924 to build their own test tank lead to floats for various companies – and some Schneider Trophy racers.

The shame is that Short Brothers are always seen as an aircraft company – but in the 20s and 30s they built a lot of other things, floats, boats, buses and even a car. By the time Rochester’s seaplane works closed, they had probably built more buses than aircraft.

All the Short Brothers production archives photos for many aircraft have been transfered from Bombardier aerospace to the public records office of Northern Ireland.

Now that is good news. I had heard that they might find a new home for the archive and they found a good accessible one. I can only hope they are transferring documents as well as the photo albums. There’s a lot of stuff to catalogue but I can feel the need for a trip to Belfast.

Think its going to be a question of waiting until the collection is fully catalogued,but you never know !!!
Martin.

All the Short Brothers production archives photos for many aircraft have been transfered from Bombardier aerospace to the public records office of Northern Ireland.They are currently being catalogued but will be available for public viewing before too long.In the long term they are aiming to have them `on-line`.

Thanks for the info, good to hear –
“All the Short Brothers production archives photos for many aircraft…” – reading this carefully, the question remains:
where are the documents and photos of the float production archived?

All the Short Brothers production archives photos for many aircraft have been transfered from Bombardier aerospace to the public records office of Northern Ireland.They are currently being catalogued but will be available for public viewing before too long.In the long term they are aiming to have them `on-line`.

There is the Putnams book by C.H. Barnes but it does not have a seperate section on it’s float production.

John

Thanks John!

There is the Putnams book by C.H. Barnes but it does not have a seperate section on it’s float production.

John

Are there any other books on the Short Brothers,
beside the two books by Michael Donne
‘Pioneers of the skies’
‘Flying into the future’ ?

I’ve not seen that much either, certainly not detailed drawings.

This page from a 1930s brochure shows they built them in different sizes, apparently for aircraft up to a max weight of 23,500lbs.