Ulster Aviation Society, Long Kesh
In wartime hangars where Shorts built Stirlings. Holds a Short 330, a Tucano prototype and the Short SB.5.
The types
Short aircraft you can see
| Type | First flew | Built | UK museums |
|---|---|---|---|
| Santos-Dumont Demoiselle & the pioneer replicasDemoiselle, Ferguson Flyer, Wallbro, White, Short S.27, Roe I Biplane, Lilienthal, Cody kite | 1907 | one-offs, mostly | 6 |
| Short 184fuselage | 1915 | ~900 | 1 |
| Felixstowe F.5F.5 | 1917 | 163 (+227 US F-5L) | 1 |
| Short SunderlandMR.5 + Sandringham | 1937 | 749 | 4 |
| Short StirlingI/III/IV | 1939 | 2,371 | 2 |
| Handley Page HP.115 & the research one-offsHP.115, Hunting H.126, Short SB.4 Sherpa, Hawker P.1052 & P.1121, Saunders-Roe SR.53 | 1948 | 1 or 2 apiece | 4 |
| Boulton Paul P.111 & Short SB.5 | 1951 | 2 | 2 |
| GAF Jindivik & the target drones | 1957 | ~500 | 13 |
| Short Belfast | 1964 | 10 | 1 |
| Short 330330-100 | 1974 | 141 | 2 |
| Short Tucano | 1986 | ~160 | 4 |
The firm
Short in brief
From 1913 seaplanes were built at Rochester on the Medway. In 1915 a Short 184 became the first aircraft to attack a ship with a torpedo. Between the wars Shorts built flying boats for Imperial Airways, then the Sunderland. In 1936 it formed Short and Harland with Harland and Wolff to build aircraft in Belfast.
The government took control in 1943, and by 1948 Shorts was a wholly Belfast company. Later came the Belfast freighter, the Skyvan, the 330 and 360 and a licence-built Tucano. Bombardier bought Shorts in 1989, and Spirit AeroSystems took over in 2020. Boeing acquired the Belfast site in December 2025.
Where to go
Museums holding Short aircraft
| Museum | Short types | Adult entry | Airframes | Headline exhibit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ulster Aviation Society (Maze Long Kesh)Lisburn, County Antrim | 6 | By appointment | 63 | The Shorts family — SC.1 vertical take-off research aircraft included — plus a Buccaneer, Phantom, Wildcat, and a newly arrived AV-8… |
| Fleet Air Arm MuseumYeovil, Somerset | 4 | £21 | 97 | Concorde 002 (G-BSST), the first British-assembled Concorde, which made her maiden flight from Filton in 1969 and now headlines a hall of… |
| Army Flying MuseumStockbridge, Hampshire | 2 | £18 | 43 | Middle Wallop's Army Flying Museum covers everything the Army has flown from observation balloons to Apaches, with superb dioramas and a… |
| Brooklands MuseumWeybridge, Surrey | 2 | £24–£27 | 32 | Concorde G-BBDG, the British production-test aircraft, bookended by a Wellington bomber dredged out of Loch Ness in 1985 and the only… |
| IWM DuxfordCambridge, Cambridgeshire | 2 | £29 | 146 | Concorde 101 (G-AXDN), the pre-production development aircraft and the fastest Concorde of them all at Mach 2.23 — plus an SR-71A… |
| Newark Air MuseumNewark, Nottinghamshire | 2 | £12.50 | 95 | Vulcan XM594, with cockpit tours occasionally given by former Vulcan aircrew, which reviewers describe with the reverence normally… |
| Royal Air Force Museum LondonLondon, Greater London | 2 | Free | 88 | Avro Lancaster R5868 'S-Sugar' — 137 operations, the RAF's highest-scoring surviving heavy — under the same roof as a Vulcan, a… |
| Royal Air Force Museum MidlandsShifnal, Shropshire | 2 | Free | 78 | TSR-2 XR220, one of two survivors of the most gifted aircraft Britain ever cancelled, sharing floor space with the stainless-steel… |
| Yorkshire Air MuseumYork, North Yorkshire | 2 | £17 | 54 | Halifax 'Friday the 13th' — the world's only complete Halifax reconstruction, honouring the type that flew from this very field —… |
| Boscombe Down Aviation CollectionSalisbury, Wiltshire | 1 | £13.50 | 49 | The Lancaster cockpit reproduction tour, and a test-and-evaluation pedigree collection you can physically inhabit rather than admire… |
| Bournemouth Aviation MuseumChristchurch, Dorset | 1 | £10 | 29 | The sit-anywhere policy itself — one entry fee, no per-cockpit charges, a full BAC 1-11 flight-deck sim in a shed, and thousands… |
| Cornwall at War Museum, DavidstowCamelford, Cornwall | 1 | £7 | 8 | Cornwall’s big WW2 / military museum on the old RAF Davidstow Moor Coastal Command field — aircraft, military vehicles, humour intact,… |
| Farnborough Air Sciences Trust MuseumFarnborough, Hampshire | 1 | Free | 16 | FAST at Farnborough guards the birthplace of British aviation science — Cody, the RAE, wind tunnels — with sit-in Harrier, Puma and Lynx… |
| Hardwick Airfield MuseumBungay, Norfolk | 1 | Free | 2 | Hardwick Airfield Museum — home of the 93rd BG 'Ted's Travelling Circus', the Eighth’s longest-serving Liberator group — a hangar of… |
| Midland Air MuseumCoventry, Warwickshire | 1 | £11 | 66 | Vulcan XL360 with cockpit access and volunteer-led tours (ask for the instrumentation talk), plus the Whittle jet heritage collection a… |
| MorayviaForres, Moray | 1 | £8 | 35 | Nimrod XV244 (complete, and the crew who operated her sometimes give the tours) alongside a Sea King in RAF SAR yellow — the machine that… |
| National Museum Of FlightNorth Berwick, East Lothian | 1 | £15 | 47 | Concorde G-BOAA, which flew British Airways' first commercial supersonic service in 1976 and arrived here by barge and giant road-crawl… |
| Norfolk and Suffolk Aviation MuseumBungay, Suffolk | 1 | £10 | 65 | Depends who you ask — the joy is the oddities. Come for the Bloodhound missiles and decoy rarities; stay for volunteer flight-simulator… |
| North East Land, Sea and Air MuseumsSunderland, Tyne and Wear | 1 | £7.50 | 46 | NELSAM in Sunderland mixes Vulcan XL319 (flew in when the airport still existed), a Pucará from the Falklands, trams, buses and a… |
| Pembroke Dock Heritage CentrePembroke Dock, Pembrokeshire | 1 | £7 | 1 | Pembroke Dock Heritage Centre in the Georgian dockyard chapel: the world's largest flying-boat station in WWII (Sunderlands of the Battle… |
| Solent SkySouthampton, Hampshire | 1 | £14 | 23 | Supermarine S.6A N248, the 1929 Schneider Trophy racer from the bloodline that begat the Spitfire — parked beneath its descendant for… |
| South Yorkshire Aircraft MuseumDoncaster, South Yorkshire | 1 | £7.50 | 109 | Doncaster's South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum sprawls across the old RAF Doncaster site: dozens of airframes and helicopters, strong… |
| The Gliding Heritage CentreAlton, Hampshire | 1 | Donation | 72 | Lasham's Gliding Heritage Centre: Europe's finest vintage-glider collection, most of them airworthy and actually flown, with free… |
| The Helicopter MuseumWeston-super-Mare, Somerset | 1 | £15 | 108 | G-LYNX, the modified Westland Lynx that took the absolute helicopter world speed record (249.09 mph) in 1986 and holds it still; parked… |
| The Shuttleworth CollectionBiggleswade, Bedfordshire | 1 | £19.50 | 55 | The 1934 DH.88 Comet 'Grosvenor House', winner of the MacRobertson England–Australia air race, restored to fly; and the Edwardians —… |
Questions
Frequently asked
Where were Short aircraft built?
At Battersea, Shellbeach and Eastchurch at first, then Rochester from 1913. Belfast took over from 1936 and became the sole base by 1948.
Is Shorts still making aircraft?
Its Belfast site now makes aerostructures and nacelles for other manufacturers. Boeing took it over in December 2025.
Was Short Brothers the first aircraft maker?
It is often credited as the first company to build production aeroplanes, after taking British rights to the Wright Flyer in 1908.