22 Facts About Shorts Brothers

Short Brothers plc, usually referred to as Shorts or Short, is an aerospace company based in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

In 1943, Shorts Brothers was nationalised and later denationalised, and in 1948 moved from its main base at Rochester, Kent to Belfast.

Shorts Brothers was primarily government-owned until being bought by Bombardier in 1989, and is today the largest manufacturing concern in Northern Ireland.

Short Shorts Brothers business started in 1897 when Eustace Short bought a second-hand coal gas filled balloon, and, with his brother Oswald, started a company to develop and manufacture balloons.

In February 1909, Shorts Brothers started construction of a new workshop on unobstructed marshland at Leysdown, near Shellbeach on the Isle of Sheppey.

Related searches

Short Shorts Brothers thus became the first aircraft manufacturing company in the world to undertake volume production of an aircraft design.

In 1910 the Royal Aero Club and Short Shorts Brothers moved to a larger and less marshy ground at Eastchurch, about 2.

In 1911, Shorts Brothers built one of the world's first successful twin-engine aircraft, the Triple Twin.

In 1916, Short Shorts Brothers was awarded a contract to build two large dirigible airships for the Admiralty.

Shorts Brothers survived without reducing the company's workforce by diversifying into areas such as building lightweight bus and tram bodies.

In 1924, Shorts Brothers produced the first of a series of three designs known as the Singapore.

Shorts Brothers then started design work on the Short Calcutta, based on the Singapore layout but larger and more powerful, which began service with Imperial Airways in August 1928.

Shorts Brothers followed the production of four Calcuttas with the larger Kent, following with a series of still larger aircraft designs such as the Short Empire, the first of which was launched on 2 July 1936.

Year later Shorts Brothers won a British government defence contract for the Sunderland military patrol flying boat.

In 1933, Shorts Brothers opened a new factory at Rochester Airport, which was becoming increasingly important for the landplanes the company was producing.

The Eastchurch premises was closed in 1934, and in the same year Shorts Brothers purchased the engine manufacturer Pobjoy, which had moved to Rochester Airport to be near Shorts Brothers and had collaborated on its latest designs.

Attempts by Shorts Brothers to sell improved versions to the RAF were ignored, not least over concerns regarding Oswald's leadership and alcoholism.

Shorts Brothers built the Short Sperrin, a backup jet engine bomber design in case the V bomber projects failed, and the Short Seamew, a cheap-to-produce anti-submarine reconnaissance and attack aircraft intended for the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve squadrons, but the Sperrin was not needed and the RNVR squadrons disbanded.

In 1987 loyalists working at Shorts Brothers erected loyalists flags and bunting to intimidate the Catholic workers.

In 1993 a Catholic sub-contractor at Shorts Brothers was shot dead and five others injured in a loyalist attack on a mini-bus full of Catholic workmen in an attack to discourage Catholics from taking jobs at Shorts Brothers.

In 1937, Shorts Brothers established an airfield in central Belfast, beside the factory.

Shorts Brothers continued to use the airfield until production of complete aircraft ceased, despite Nutts Corner, a former RAF base, becoming Belfast's main airport.