Short Brothers SC.1

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1 History
2 Specifications
- 2.1 General characteristics
- 2.2 Performance
3 External link

[edit] History

The Short Brothers Short SC.1 was the first British fixed-wing vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft.

It was powered by four vertically-mounted RB.108 lift engines providing a total vertical thrust of 8,600 lb and one RB.108 cruise engine in the rear, to provide thrust for forward flight.

The SC.1 was designed to study hover, transition and low-speed flight, bleeds from the four lift engines powering nose, tail and wing tip jets for control at low speeds, when there was insufficient airflow over the conventional control surfaces.

The first conventional take-off and landing (CTOL) flight was made on 2 April 1957. Just over a year later the first tethered vertical flight was made on 26 May 1958, followed on 25 October of that year by the first free vertical flight. The first in-flight transition was made on 6 April 1960.

The SC.1 was shown at the Farnborough air show in 1960 and the Paris air show in 1961.

As described by the VSTOL website referred to below: "Pilot workload was very high during landing, just when pilot attention was most important. The lift engines had to be started as late as possible, due to the high combined fuel consumption of the five engines. The ignition procedure was very labor intensive, as was transition from wing-borne to jet-borne flight. The second test aircraft crashed on 2 October 1963 due to a controls malfunction, killing the pilot. It was rebuilt and the two aircraft continued to fly until 1967."

The first SC-1 (XG900) was used until 1971 for VTOL research and is now part of the Science Museum's aircraft collection at Wroughton, England. The second SC-1 (G-ATXX) can be seen at the Flight Experience exhibit at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, Cultra, N. Ireland