page_title: Short Brothers
section_title: First World War
hierarchical_section_title: Short Brothers / History / First World War
context_page_description: Short Brothers plc, usually referred to as Shorts or Short, is an aerospace company based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Shorts was founded in 1908 in London, and was the first company in the world to make production aeroplanes. It was particularly notable for its flying boat designs manufactured into the 1950s.
  In 1943 Shorts was nationalised and later denationalised, and in 1948 moved from its main base at Rochester, Kent to Belfast. In the 1960s, Shorts mainly produced turboprop airliners, major components for aerospace primary manufacturers, and missiles for the British Armed Forces.
  Shorts was primarily government-owned until being bought by Bombardier in 1989, and is today the largest manufacturing concern in Northern Ireland. In 2019, Bombardier announced that it would sell its Belfast operations to Spirit AeroSystems.
  The company's products include aircraft components, engine nacelles and aircraft flight control systems for its parent company Bombardier Aerospace, and for Boeing, Rolls-Royce Deutschland, General Electric and Pratt & Whitney.
context_section_description: By the outbreak of World War I Shorts were already building a variety of aircraft. Production really started to expand during the war, for example for the Short Admiralty Type 184 (or simply "Short S.184"). On 15 August 1915, during the Battle of Gallipoli, a Short S.184 was the first aircraft to attack a ship with a live torpedo. Flying from HMS Ben-my-Chree, piloted by Flight Commander Charles Edmonds, it hit a Turkish supply ship in the Dardanelles. In terms of number built, the S.184 was Shorts' most successful pre-Second World War aircraft: over 900 were produced, many under licence by other manufacturers. A landplane version of the S.184 was also sold to the Royal Flying Corps as the Short Bomber.
  During the First World War, Shorts were among the manufacturers of two flying boats, the F.3 and F.5, designed by John Porte at the Seaplane Experimental Station, Felixstowe. When the war ended, some 50 of these were being built at Rochester.
caption: Short 184 floatplane
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