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Cierva W.11 Air Horse

type of aircraft

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionDec 11, 2025
Entity authorityQ1091805 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Cierva W.11 Air Horse was a helicopter developed by the Cierva Autogiro Company in the United Kingdom during the mid-1940s. The largest helicopter in the world at the time of its debut, the Air Horse was unusual for using three rotors mounted on outriggers, and driven by a single engine mounted inside the fuselage.

Only two aircraft were built, further development by Cierva was stopped after the crash of the first one and little work was done under Saunders Roe before the project was ended and the second aircraft was scrapped in 1951.

Development

The W.11 "Air Horse" heavy lift helicopter was developed by the G & J Weir, Ltd., Aircraft Department, reconstituted in 1943 as the Cierva Autogiro Company. The "W" in the designation is a continuation of the autogiro and helicopter series developed by G & J Weir, Ltd., during the period 1932–1940.

The W.11 was a development of the Weir W.6 dual transverse rotor helicopter. It is the only helicopter of its type ever built and included three lifting rotors all turning in the same direction. The adoption of three rotors was due to concerns over the capability of a single large rotor to generate the required lift.

Torque balance was provided by slightly inclining each rotor axis to generate horizontal thrust components to provide anti-torque moments. The three rotor configuration was foreseen by Belgian helicopter experimenter Nicolas Florine in his patent of 1926 which presented the aforementioned means for balancing the reaction on the fuselage of two or more torque driven lifting rotors turning in the same direction.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Cierva W.11 Air Horse” as type of aircraft. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1951, 1943, 1932, 1940—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Cierva, Horse and type can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as type of aircraft. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 11, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q1091805. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1951, 1943, 1932 and 1940.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Cierva W.11 Air Horse” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.