Short Kent

The Short S.17 Kent was a British four-engined biplane luxury flying boat airliner with 15 seats, designed and built by Short Brothers for Imperial Airways, which wanted more range than the Calcutta to fly from Mirabella in Crete to Alexandria without stops in Italian territory after a political row led Italy to ban British aircraft from its ports. It was essentially an enlarged, four-engined Calcutta with Bristol Jupiter radial engines and duralumin box spars, with walkways that gave access to the engines. Three were built, named Scipio, Sylvanus and Satyrus and known together as the Scipio class, and the first was launched and flown on 24 February 1931. A landplane version, the Scylla, followed.