Gloster Grouse

Gloster Grouse
Role	Experimental Aircraft, Fighter
Manufacturer	Gloster Aircraft Company
Designer	H.P.Folland
First flight	1923
Introduction	1924
Status	retired
Primary user	Swedish Air Force
Number built	1
Developed from	Gloster Sparrowhawk
Variants	Gloster Grebe

The Gloster Grouse was a British biplane of the 1920s developed by the Gloster Aircraft Company. Often referred to as the prototype to the Gloster Grebe, the Grouse originally built as an experimental aircraft and then later developed as a trainer. Despite its compact design and maneuverability, the Grouse was not in itself a commercial success, although it formed the basis for the Gloster Grebe and Gamecock fighters which were used by Britain's Royal Air Force into the 1930s.

The design of the Gloster Grouse was an experiment to combine the advantages of the monoplane with those of a biplane. It was designed by English aviation engineer and aircraft designer Henry Folland, the designer of the S.E.5 among other aircraft. The top wing had a thick, high lift aerofoil, while the bottom wing was smaller, with a thinner medium lift aerofoil set at a smaller angle of attack than the upper wing. This arrangement was meant to produce high lift for take-off with low drag.

To test this arrangement, new wings were fitted to a modified Gloster Sparrowhawk fuselage to produce the Gloster Grouse. The resulting aircraft was a small biplane with single bay wooden wings. The fuselage was rather short, and while the aircraft used the fuselage of a two-seat Sparrowhawk II, the forward cockpit was faired over, leaving a single seat for the pilot in an open cockpit.The Grouse retained the Bentley BR2 rotary engine of the Sparrowhawk driving a two blade propeller.

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