Talk:Short S.45

Types and c/ns

Nice article. I've thought before, when writing about these early Short aircraft that it would be worth making the point (early, maybe in a footnote) that these S numbers are c/ns, identifying particular machines and not types. It is confusing, especially since Shorts later used another series of S. numbers as true type numbers, from the Cockle onwards. The header makes the point, implicitly, but maybe an explicit statement would help. I think that if I've got this right footnote 4 is confusing, as it talks about types S.36 and S.45 where it should say aircraft.

These early aircraft with their hazy and sometimes multiple designations and continual evolution are always an interesting challenge!TSRL (talk) 09:15, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks; in fact, the confusion runs even deeper. Depending on which schema you adopt, either the S.36 type is represented by a single aircraft (S.36) and the S.45 type by four aircraft (S.45 and S.48–S.50), or the S.36 type is represented by five aircraft (S.36, S.45, and S.48–S.50) and there is no "S.45 type". We face similar situations every time we document types where only a single example was ever built. In the case of some Shorts aircraft, the Admiralty designations (which also, after all, referred to a specific serial number) muddies the water further; and we have a trace of this confusion in this particular article where "T.5" was of course one specific aircraft, but is elsewhere (like in Jane's Encyclopedia) used as a type descriptor. Madness. FWIW, describing these particular aircraft as types has a long history; the reference in Jane's Fighting Aircraft of World War I is in fact a facsimile reproduction from a contemporary Jane's All the World's Aircraft (perhaps the 1918 edition?) Another way of thinking of this is in terms of ship classes, which is probably how the Admiralty was thinking :) --Rlandmann (talk) 10:43, 14 February 2010 (UTC)