Mann Egerton’s Air Fleet

The reason for the Mann Egerton & Co. Ltd. aircraft is that aircraft were built under licence by them, these particular ones in 1916. The big Short bomber was known as their type CA having the

lengthened fuselage which was incorporated into these machines after Shorts had realised that the initial batches of short fuselage machines lacked longitudinal stability. Mann Egerton had only built one short fuselage aircraft from a batch of twenty before the modification was implemented. The middle aircraft in the photo is not in fact a Short but the Mann Egerton Type ’13” which, while the fuselage tail W. and floats were Short 184 design, the wings were completely Mann Egerton designed, having two bays, heavy overhang of the top wing etc., and the Sunbeam Mohawk was mounted higher than in the Short 184. Ten of these were built.

The last aircraft is a Sopwith 11/2 Strutter two-seater from a batch of thirty machines built for the RNAS in 1916. The other photo showing the Henri Farman with BE2a 456 in the background was taken at Farnborough, almost certainly in September or October 1913 before the BE was sent to CFS. The unmarked Henri being a French built machine would be awaiting the allocation of its serial number presumably. Scarborough STUART LESLIE