Armament:

One 7.7 mm (0.303 in) rifle or Lewis machine gun; up to eighteen 7.3 kg (16 lb) bombs on underwing racks

History:

The Farman brothers, Henri and Maurice, established a collaborative business to produce aircraft, although they retained their independent activities. In 1910 Maurice began experimentation with a design which led to the Farman MF.7, an unequal-span biplane with a multiplicity of struts and bracing wires, fitted with a pusher engine, this being the 52 kw (70 hp) Renault. It became known as the ‘Longhorn’ due to the undercarriage skids extending upwards into the supports for the forward elevator, although officially it was known as the MF.7.

The design first appeared in 1913 and was initially known as the Type 1913. It performed well early in World War I but came into its own when used as a trainer. It was licence-built in the United Kingdom by Brush, Phoenix Dynamo and Robey Peters. Many were fitted with the 56 kw (75 hp) Rolls Royce Hawk six-cylinder in-line engine. This was the first engine produced by Rolls Royce for aviation purposes.

The MF.11 ‘Shorthorn’ was developed from the Farman MF.7 ‘Longhorn’ and had a number of refinements, the major one being dispensation with the forward elevator, being fitted with a conventional elevator, this being hinged to the tailplane, and twin rudders. Also, the fuselage nacelle was mounted between the wings. Power plant was either the 52 kw (70 hp) or 75 kw (100 hp) Renault, but one was fitted with a 97 kw (130 hp) Canton-Unne engine. It was available with wheels or floats, being used extensively in the reconnaissance, bombing and training roles.

A ‘Shorthorn’performed the first operational night bombing flight to be made in World War I on 21 December 1914 when it delivered eighteen 7.25 kg (16 lb) bombs on gun positions in the Ostend, Belgium area. The ‘Shorthorn’ was also built in Italy by SIA, being fitted with the 75 kw (100 hp) Fiat or Colomba engines in operational service, and the 60 kw (80 hp) Gnome engine for training use. During production the French facility at Billancourt at its peak had 5,000 employees and produced ten aeroplanes per day.

The ‘Shorthorn’ was constructed of wood and fabric with wire bracing. The engine was positioned behind the nacelle, a pilot and passenger being accommodated in cane wicker seats. The engine drove a propeller 2.74 m (9 ft) in diameter. Entry was via a ladder. The wing loading permitted a stalling speed of 40 km/h (25 mph), thus making it ideal for operations from small paddocks.

The ‘Shorthorn’ was amongst the first armed aircraft to engage in combat and one was known to have been flown by an Australian, Captain Watt, on operations in France in 1915 carrying a kangaroo insignia. No 5 Training Squadron, Australian Flying Corps, was equipped with the type in England.

Normally fitted with a 7.7 mm (0.303 in) Lewis machine gun as armament, the ‘Shorthorn’ was not particularly successful as it was found that the extra weight of the machine gun and necessary ammunition decreased the already marginal performance on 52 kw (70 hp) so that the aircraft could not reach the heights at which German aircraft operated. It served on the Western Front, in the Aegean, in Mesopotamia and in the Dardanelles.

One became famous when used by the Royal Australian Navy from Twofold Bay on the New South Wales south coast searching for the German raider ‘SM Wolf’ and its reconnaissance seaplane the ‘Wolfchen’. This ‘Shorthorn’ (serial CF-17) was dismantled and loaded on board ‘HMAS Protector’. The crew, Lts J Tunbridge and R Galloway, who had both served in Palestine, and a support crew, left Williamstown, VIC on 24 April 1918. At Twofold Bay the aircraft was unloaded from the vessel, making its first flight within a few days, and, with an RAF FE.2b, searched unsuccessfully for the German raider.

Another was imported in 1914 by well known Sydney businessman, Lebbeus Hordern, and, fitted with floats and known as the Farman Hydroplane, was flown occasionally from Sydney Harbour. This machine was eventually presented to the Australian Government and converted to landplane configuration, becoming serial CFS-7 as part of the small fleet of the type used at Point Cook, VIC for pilot training.

The ‘Shorthorn’ was also built in the United Kingdom by the Aircraft Manufacturing Company Ltd of Hendon in Greater London. Whereas French-built aircraft were fitted usually with a Renault engine, many British-built aircraft had a 75 kw (100 hp) Rolls Royce Hawk engine installed. One aircraft was registered in the United Kingdom as G-EAAZ, this formerly being used as a trainer by the RAF as B4674. It was registered to Major H S Shield and was flown from Old Sarum to Squires Gate in May 1919.

If the ‘Shorthorns’ operated from Point Cook were British-built they could have been fitted with the Hawk engine. Certainly two examples of this engine have survived, have been held in the collection of the Camden Museum of Aviation at Narellan, NSW and may have come from these aircraft. The Hawk was a six-cylinder un-geared vertical, liquid-cooled unit, although it would appear from surviving records the Australian aircraft were probably fitted with a Wolseley Renault engine.

The ‘Shorthorn’ and ‘Longhorn’ also saw service with the Australian Half Flight in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) in 1915-1916. This unit, also known as the Mesopotamia Flight, IFC, and later B Flight of No 30 Squadron RFC, arrived in Basra on 26 May 1915, commencing operations on 31 May. Serial numbers of aircraft operated are known to have included IFC-1, IFC-7 and IFC-10, which were ‘Shorthorns’; and IFC-2, a ‘Longhorn’. ‘Shorthorn’ IFC-1 was badly damaged in a landing at Ali Gharbi on 11 September 1915; and ‘Longhorn’ IFC-2 was damaged on a raid behind enemy lines 13 km (8 miles) west of Baghdad in Iraq on 13 November 1915.

Records have indicated six ‘Shorthorns’ were ordered for the Central Flying School at Point Cook. ‘Shorthorns’ with the serial numbers CFS-16, CFS-17, CFS-18, CFS-19 and CFS-20 were used in the elementary training role. CFS-15 was operated from 1916. It is known aircraft with serials CFS-15 and CFS-18 were still being used in the training role in August 1918. ‘Shorthorn’ CFS-16 was officially written off and reduced to components on 22 February 1918.

In 1919 the four survivors were sold, along with the stock of spares for the aircraft, carrying the markings CFS-16, CFS-17, CFS-19 and CFS-20, and were delivered to well known aviator, R Graham Carey on 16 April 1919. Photographs have survived of these four aircraft together at Port Melbourne Aerodrome at that time. Mr Carey, along with his partner, Mr A Fenton (at the time Mayor of the City of Essendon) formed a company called Melbourne Air Service and started operations at Port Melbourne in 1920. However, on the date of delivery, because the company’s hangar had not been completed, the aircraft were picketed in the open.

A storm that evening caused extensive damage to two of the aircraft, and it would appear CFS-17 was destroyed. The others were repaired and operated joy-riding services. One performed what was probably the first commercial charter flight in Australia in July 1919 when Graham Carey flew a representative of the Dodge Motor Company of America to Bendigo, VIC and return. Other charter flights are known to have been made to Warrnambool and Ballarat in Victoria. Mr Carey flew at least one of the aircraft up to the 1930s on advertising, joy flights and barnstorming.

There is no record of the fate of CFS-15 and CFS-18, although there is a note that a Farman ‘Shorthorn’ crashed at Mornington, VIC in 1919. It is known CFS-18 was flying in May and June 1918, and CFS-15 was still flying in August 1918. Records have indicated CFS-7, which was the former Hydroplane, was converted to landplane configuration on 28 June 1917 and was used in the repair of CFS-17 before the latter was involved in a fatal crash in November 1917. There has been some conjecture that CFS-7 and CFS-15 were one and the same aircraft but photographic evidence of CFS-15 taken on 2 April 1917has indicated it was on wheels at the time, well before CFS-7 was removed from its floats. There is a possibility that due to wear and tear CFS-18 and CFS-15 were incorporated as one aircraft to become CFS-20 later in 1918.

Two Farmans found their way on to the Australian Civil Aircraft Register. One of the former R G Carey aircraft became G-AUBC (c/n 1505 – ex CFS-19). This aircraft was registered to R G Carey trading as Melbourne Air Service of Port Melbourne on 28 June 1921, Certificate of Airworthiness No 27 being issued and Certificate of Registration No 2 being issued. On 24 February 1926 ownership was transferred to Edwin Prosser of Tamworth, NSW.  The aircraft is believed to have been damaged in an accident in March 1926.  It was rebuilt at Moorabbin, VIC. In 1956 it was exported to the United States, was registered as N9645Z whilst with the Tallmanz Museum, and was displayed at the Movieland Air Museum in California. In 1968 it was sold at auction to the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa, Canada where it was restored and placed on display in the museum.

The remains of G-AUCW (c/n 1326), a former Central Flying School ‘Shorthorn’, were stored for many years and in 1981 Mr Carey’s daughter donated what was left of this and other ‘Shorthorns’ to the RAAF Museum at Point Cook. From the remains of several aircraft the museum restored a ‘Shorthorn’, using approximately 30 per cent of original parts, and it was placed on display at the RAAF Museum. The aircraft has been fitted with an original Renault V-8 engine obtained from the Australian War Memorial. This type of engine was built by Kelly & Lewis, a Melbourne company, for use in this type of aircraft and some six examples are known to have been built, one surviving at the Moorabbin Air Museum. The RAAF Museum also has on display separately one of the original rudders from CFS-15.

In New Zealand an MF.11bis replica was built, painted in Belgian markings by The Vintage Aviator Limited (TVAL) of Wellington and placed on display at the NZ War Museum (formerly known as the Dominion Museum) in 2015 as part of the Sir Peter Jackson Great War Exhibition but the cost of the exhibition was too great and, after some little time, the exhibition was closed, the aircraft removed from the museum and is believed to have been placed in storage in the TVAL premises in the old General Motors facility in Wellington.