Southern Martlet

Southern Martlet
The Shuttleworth Trust's Martlet
Role	single-seat sports biplane
National origin	United Kingdom
Manufacturer	Southern Aircraft Company
Designer	F.G Miles
First flight	1929
Number built	6
Developed from	Avro Baby

The Southern Martlett was a single-engined, single-seat biplane sports aircraft. Six were built, including the rather different and unsuccessful Metal Martlet.

The Southern Martlet was the first aircraft designed by teams led Frederick George Miles, whose company was Southern Aircraft of Shoreham. It was a modified Avro Baby, differing in the tail unit, undercarriage and engine, the 85 hp A.B.C. Hornet air-cooled flat four. Like the Baby, it was a single-bay staggered tractor biplane, with fixed two-wheel main and tail-skid undercarriage. The undercarriage was a combination of "oleo and coil-spring shock absorbing gear" designed by Basil Henderson of Hendy Aircraft, Shoreham. The prototype G-AAII made its first public appearance on 30 August 1929 at London Air Park, Hanworth, and proved to be a very manoeuvrable sports machine.

Five production aircraft were built at Shoreham, differing chiefly in the choice of engine. Three of them had 80 hp Armstrong Siddeley Genet II and one a 100 hp Armstrong Siddeley Genet Major. These were five-cylinder uncowled radials. One aircraft had, at different times, a de Havilland Gipsy I or II (100 hp and 120 hp respectively), upright in-line air-cooled engines.

The Martlets were not very successful as racers but served a succession of private owners as aerobatic mounts.

Only one Martlet, the Genet Major engined G-AAYX survived the war. It was overhauled by Miles in 1947 and is now flying with the Shuttleworth Trust at Old Warden, UK

From

Data from Jackson 1960, pp. 269–72

General characteristics

Performance

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