Avro 552

The Avro 552 was a British light biplane aircraft produced in the early 1920s. It was another attempt by Avro to sell a derivative of the wartime 504 into the civil market.

Design and development

In this case, the company took advantage of the large number of war-surplus Wolseley Viper engines left over from Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5a production. In 1921, one of these was married to a standard 504K airframe for evaluation under the designation Avro 551. Trials proved encouraging, but an extra fuel tank was installed in the upper wing as a result of the Viper's higher rate of fuel consumption, and changes were made to the aileron design as well.

This configuration went into production as the 552, with the Argentine Navy purchasing 13 examples of a float-equipped version, the 552A, which served as trainers until 1927. Two similar machines were purchased by Bulgaria.

In 1924, the Royal Canadian Air Force arranged for Canadian Vickers to purchase a licence to produce five landplane and nine seaplane examples for use in forestry patrol. These differed from British-built aircraft by the use of U.S. Naval Aircraft Factory floats, and increased fuel tankage for extended range. Licence production was also undertaken by C.B. Field of Kingswood Knoll, Surrey, who built three aircraft from surplus components supplied by Avro. These were flown as banner tugs by Inca Aviation until 1935.

The fuselage of the 552 prototype, G-EAPR was eventually used as the basis for the Cierva C.8 autogyro, but was eventually converted back to winged configuration by a private owner when disposed of by the company.

Operators

Template:ARG

• Argentine Navy

Template:BUL

Template:Country data Canada

• Royal Canadian Air Force

References

• Taylor, Michael J. H. (1989). Jane's Encyclopedia of Aviation. London: Studio Editions, 93. 

External links

• British Aircraft Directory

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Avro 552".