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Sopwith Camel

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This article describes the fighter plane. For the 1960s psychedelic rock music band, see Sopwith Camel (band).
A Sopwith Camel at the Imperial War Museum in London.

The Sopwith Camel Scout was a British World War I single-seat fighter aircraft that was famous for its manoeuvrability.

History

File:Sopwith.Camel in flying.jpg
A Sopwith flying during WWI.

Intended as a replacement for the Sopwith Pup, the Sopwith Camel prototype first flew in December 1916. It was known as the "Big Pup" early on in its development. It was armed with two .303 in (7.7 mm) Vickers machine guns mounted in front of the cockpit, firing forward through the propeller disc. A fairing surrounding the gun installation created a hump that led to the aircraft acquiring the name Camel. The Camel entered squadron service in June 1917. Approximately 5,500 Camels were produced.

Unlike the preceding Pup and Triplane, the Camel was not considered pleasant to fly. The strong gyroscopic effect of the rotary engine resulted in strange handling, and the Camel was notoriously dangerous to student pilots. Many crashed due to mishandling on takeoff, when a full fuel tank affected the center of gravity and degraded longitudinal stability, and landing. In level flight, the Camel was markedly tail-heavy. It turned sharply to the right with a nose-down attitude, while it turned slowly to the left with a nose-up attitude. Turns in either direction required left rudder. Any stall immediately resulted in a spin, and the Camel was particularly noted for its vicious spinning characteristics.

Nevertheless, agility in combat made the Sopwith Camel one of the best remembered Allied aircraft of World War I. Among its survivors it was known as providing a choice between a "wooden cross, red cross, and Victoria Cross." Together with the S.E.5a, the Camel wrested aerial superiority away from the German Albatros scouts. The Camel was credited with shooting down 1294 enemy aircraft, more than any other Allied scout. Major William Barker's personal Sopwith Camel (serial no. B6313) became the most successful fighter aircraft in the history of the RAF, shooting down 46 aircraft & balloons from September 1917 to September 1918 ; a total of 404 operational hours flying. It was dismantled in October 1918, Barker keeping the clock as a memento, although he was asked to return it the following day.

By mid-1918, the Camel was basically obsolete, limited by its slow speed and comparatively poor performance over 12,000 feet. However, the protracted development of the Camel's replacement, the Sopwith Snipe, meant that the Camel remained in service until the Armistice.

Variants

The Camel was powered by a variety of rotary engines during the production period.

  • 130 hp Clerget 9B Rotary
  • 140 hp Clerget 9Bf Rotary
  • 110 hp Le Rhone 9J Rotary
  • 150 hp Bentley BR1 Rotary
  • 100 hp Gnome Monosoupape 9B-2 Rotary
  • 150 hp Gnome Monosoupape 9N Rotary

The Gnome engines differed from the others in that a selector switch could cut the ignition to all but one of the cylinders to reduce power for landing. (This was because rotary engines did not have throttles and were at full 'throttle' all the while the ignition was on) On the others the engine had to be "blipped" using a control column-mounted ignition switch (blip switch) to reduce power sufficiently for a safe landing.

Sopwith Camel F.1

  • Single-seat fighter scout aircraft.
  • The main production version.

Sopwith Camel 2F.1

  • Shipboard fighter scout aircraft.

Sopwith Camel 'Comic' Nightfighter

Pilot seat moved to rear. Served with Home Defence Squadrons against Zeppelin raids.

F.1/1

  • Version with tapered wings.

(Trench Fighter) T.F.1

  • Experimental trench fighter.
  • Downward angled machine guns
  • Armour plating for protection

Operators

Specifications (F.1 Camel)

Orthographically projected diagram of the Sopwith camel.
Orthographically projected diagram of the Sopwith camel.

Data from Quest for Performance[1]

General characteristics

  • Drag area: 8.73 ft² (0.81 m²)
  • Aspect ratio: 4.11 Performance
  • Lift-to-drag ratio: 7.7 Armament

    References

    1. ^ Loftin, LK, Jr. "Quest for performance: The evolution of modern aircraft. NASA SP-468". Retrieved 2006-04-22.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

    Trivia

    There are only seven vintage Sopwith Camels left in the world, with only one in the United States. It can be found at the Aerospace Education Center in Little Rock, Arkansas. Another can be found at the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio.

    Another-one, beautifully restored to near-flying condition, is at the Brussels air-museum in Belgium.

    The Camel appears in literature as:

    • The fighter flown by Biggles in the novels by W. E. Johns.
    • The "plane" of Snoopy in the Peanuts comic strip, when he imagines himself as a WWI flying ace and the nemesis of the Red Baron. The "plane" is actually his doghouse.
    • A 1960s American music group was called "The Sopwith Camel".
    • Featured in the novel by British playwright and author W. Somerset Maugham's "The Razor's Edge"

    Videogames

    The Camel also appears in the following videogames:

    Music

    The Camel also is used often by the American rock band The Royal Guardsmen in several of their songs. In The Story of The Return of The Red Baron, which preceeds the song The Return of The Red Baron on their Snoopy And His Friends album (and is something of a follow up to their song Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron, it is mentioned in a mock radio broadcast that the Red Baron "went down like a shot through the clouds, with a Camel on his tail giving it to him proper."

    The Camel also is mentioned as the plane the unfortunate Allied pilot is flying in Down Behind th Lines. Here the Camel pilot is trying to return to his side of the line during a winter's eve. The tone of the song is less upbeat than their Snoopy songs as they paint the picture of a pilot struggling to keep from, as the title tells us, going down behind the lines. The last thing we really know of him is that his engine stalls just when he manages to spy the Allied lines and is forced to try and glide to the lines, though we don't really know if he makes it or not.

    The Camel also lends its name to their Sopwith Camel Time and appears in the song Snoopy for President.

    Related content

    Aircraft of comparable role, configuration, and era

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