SOPWITH CAMEL

The iconic Sopwith Camel became one of the most successful single-seater fighters of the First World War and was credited with shooting down 1294 enemy aircraft. 

With its box-like wooden-framed, fabric-covered fuselage, wings and tail, the Sopwith was a reasonably conventional design for the era apart from the fact it that it was also the first British designed fighter to mount twin 303 Vickers machine guns directly in front of the pilot and synchronised to fire through the arc of the propeller.

The introduction of the machine gun had a profound impact on ground warfare and from the beginning of WWI, aircraft designers found themselves in a frantic race to successfully adapt them for aerial combat but the most favourable and obvious position - directly in front of the pilot and firing forward inline with the aircraft, also seemed the most impossible. How did you fire straight ahead without shooting your own propeller off?

Early designs experimented with mounting the guns above the pilot on the top wing of the biplane and angled clear of the propeller but this proved extremely difficult for the pilot to fly, aim and shoot at the same time. Reloading was also a nightmare, often requiring the pilot to stand in his seat to reload.

The Royal Flying Corp instead, adopted a number of pusher-driven aircraft with the propeller mounted at the rear.

While this did enable the pilot to fire unimpeded directly ahead, the pusher-prop design had neither the speed or manoeuvrability of the conventionally mounted propeller.

In early April 1915, the French aviator Roland Garos approached the aircraft designer Raymond Saulnier with the idea of attaching small armoured plates and triangular deflectors to the propeller blades. Later that same month a Morane-Saulnier fighter equipped with the new deflectors shot down three German aircraft in as many weeks. Garos became an instant hero but shortly after, while on a strafing run, a rifleman managed to hit the fuel line of his aircraft forcing him down into enemy territory where he was captured before he could set fire to his plane.

Within 6 months, the Germans had taken the rudimentary ‘deflector’ design and had refined the development of a synchronised mechanism they called the ‘interrupter gear' which connected the gun trigger to the engine via a cam mechanism that prevented the gun from firing when the propeller was in the vertical position. Quickly installed in the German Fokker E.I fighter, the Germans decimated the Allied aircraft even though in itself, the Fokker was a largely inferior design.

For the remainder of 1915 and well into the following year the Fokker dominated the skies over Western Europe, forcing French forces to abandon their daylight bombing campaign and shooting down an average of nearly two British aircraft a day.

Eventually the Allies managed to recover a downed German Fokker and were quick to copy and adapt the 'disrupter' mechanism to their own aircraft - the first being the Sopwith Camel.

Now for the first time, a British designed aircraft became a ‘point and shoot’ weapon of aerial combat - tying its survival and combat success directly to the flying skills of the pilot. The era of the Fighter Ace had arrived and with it, a giant leap forward in aircraft design and technology as issues of increased dive speed, rate of climb and turning manoeuvrability suddenly took on more importance with each nation looking to find an edge over their enemy. 

With its powerful single rotary engine under its aluminium cowling, the Sopwith Camel, whilst not being the easiest to master, proved to be a highly versatile and agile fighter in skilled hands and by the end of the war, had accounted for over 1294 enemy aircraft - more than any other allied fighter of the day.

The Sopwith Camel was produced in a number of variants including a naval version to be launched from the flight deck of early aircraft carriers and a night fighter version to intercept and shoot down the giant Gother Bombers and Zeppelin airships which had begun to bomb the British mainland

While the Sopwith proved to have greater agility than the new German Albatros D.III and D.V’s and was more heavier armed, by mid 1918, it was quickly overtaken by the more advanced German fighters such as the Fokker D.VII which boasted a higher rate of climb, airspeed and altitude and was soon relegated to ground attack and infantry support - its fighter role taken over by the new US designed Neuport.

All Sopwith Camel Instruments listed below come complete with a detailed, custom-built Scale Model of the Sopwith Camel Aircraft on its Magnetic Display Arm; Mango Wood Display Stand & Plaque, plus Printed Fact Sheet featuring photo of instrument in aircraft cockpit - as shown in this Fairy Swordfish example opposite:

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