Key facts
- Type
- Biplane fighter
- Manufacturer
- Sopwith Aviation Company
- Designer
- Herbert Smith
- Primary users
- Royal Flying Corps Royal Naval Air Service , Royal Air Force
- Number built
- 5,490
- Introduction date
- June 1917
- First flight
- 22 December 1916
- Retired
- January 1920
- Developed from
- Sopwith Pup
via Wikipedia infobox
~28 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The Sopwith Camel is a British First World War single-seat biplane fighter aircraft that was introduced on the Western Front in 1917. It was developed by the Sopwith Aviation Company as a successor to the Sopwith Pup and became one of the best-known fighter aircraft of the Great War. Pilots flying Camels were credited with downing 1,294 enemy aircraft, more than any other Allied fighter of the conflict. Towards the end of the war, Camels lost their edge as fighters and were also used as a ground-attack aircraft.
The Camel was powered by a single rotary engine and was armed with twin synchronized 0.303 in (7.70 mm) Vickers machine guns. It was difficult to fly, with 90% of its weight in the front two metres (seven feet) of the aircraft, but it was highly manoeuvrable in the hands of an experienced pilot, a vital attribute in the relatively low-speed, low-altitude dogfights of the era.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Sopwith Camel” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.