The Sopwith Camel: The Most Dangerous Aircraft of World War I

if you were to see it in the skies today you might start wondering how you missed out on a nearby air show you might chuckle at its quaint droning bars Putters its way through the air or might take a moment to reflect on how far Aviation has come but if you were looking at the shop with camel flying above you just a little bit over a hundred years ago you'd have been looking at the greatest to most formidable warbird in the world armed with its twin machine guns and the proud owner of nearly 1300 air kills in its lifetime the swap with camel was an icon of the biplane age and today let's learn all about it baby the story of the sobwith camel starts with its predecessor the swap with pup built by Sopwith Aviation Company a British company that had only been founded just a few years prior the pub entered service in October 1916. just as the air battles of World War One were really starting to evolve into proper dogfights the pup was a popular plane and its day highly maneuverable and generally an enjoyable experience to fly and when it first came onto the scene it quickly outclassed the early model biplanes that had been dominating the first years of the war but just as quickly as the pup eclipsed its predecessors so too was it also eclipsed by a new generation of German planes in less than eight months after it was first introduced to the battlefield the purple 1800-ish planes that have been built was obsolete the period that came immediately afterward was known as bloody April a short but vicious few weeks in which pops and other Allied aircraft were brutalized by newer German Fighters oh with little ability to fight back if it had continued unabated the British government may have been forced to concede the air War outright rather than risk sending more pups into the air to have their pilots inevitably slaughtered but luckily for the Allied war effort sup with Aviation already had a successor craft in their back pocket one that had been taking test flights and receiving its final modifications even while the pup was still in its Heyday the camel was the brainchild of sopwhit's chief engineer Herbert Smith who had also taken charge for design of the pup but understood the earlier plane's clear drawbacks his follow-on design then simply known as the big pup would have to bring significantly greater Firepower to bear with better engines and maneuverability and in the early days of fighter aircraft these sorts of improvements would have to be paid for with sacrifices elsewhere these new planes simply couldn't be designed with the same kind of pleasant easy-going pilot experience in mind the war was moving too fast and for the first time in a long and storied history of Aviation engineering performance would have to take precedence above all else like the other planes of its time Herbert Smith's big pup was built mostly of wood with a central box for its fuselage that relied on plywood as its base component this plywood was then reinforced with wire bracing to give it as much structure as possible and in front of the pilers the engine was guarded by an aluminum cowling the rest of the plane was built of a fragile largely unprotected wooden frame with fabric stretch tight across the wings and tail the cockpit was streamlined and efficient with all of its control squeezed into a small section at the front of the plane where the pilot engine and weaponry would also sit in order to make the plane more aerodynamic than its predecessors although this sort of aircraft design is one that we might dismiss as a death trap today the big pup was actually built to be a little bit bulkier and more durable than the original Pub had been as well as more maneuverable and even though the wooden canvas were prone to catching on fire and burning the entire plane down well that sort of came with the territory if you were a World War One fighter pilot the big pup used a rotary engine usually made by either the clergart or Bentley companies that generated a bit over 100 horsepower much against the biplanes that they were attached to these engines were in the middle of their own rapid Evolution they'd only become practical to use in Flight about seven years prior to the big pups first test flight and the big pup was one of the first planes to integrate an engine specifically built for aircraft earlier engines just had been bolted onto an aircraft despite being designed for cars and their weight and lack of reliability a bit a bit of a drag on aircraft performance but rotary engines were built with the specific intent of generating the most possible horsepower at the lightest possible weight the engines used in the big pup also included another major Evolution they used airflow to cool themselves even when the aircraft was stopped because of the air being sucked by the propeller through the exposed sections of the engine itself then there was the Armament which posed a problem for sopworth because the plane would have to include multiple machine guns in order to compete with German aircraft the big pup included dual machine guns mounted directly ahead of the cockpit firing cleanly into the Pilot's line of sight but this meant that now two machine guns not just one would have to be coordinated to fire in synchronicity through the blades of the propeller sopworth was able to create Britain's first synchronizer capable of handling two weapons and as time went on they replaced the synchronizer with a hydraulic system that worked even better the plane's arm and also ensured that the big pup would stand out in another way its hump-shaped cover over the machine guns which earned the nickname camel from its Pilots although it would never be referred to as such an unofficial capacity the name Stark here is a soft with camel an English fighter plane which was one of the deadliest opponents in World War One the plane would have its first test flight on the 22nd of December 1916 piloted by Harry Hawker who would later go on to co-found Hawker aircraft before long the Camel had proven to the British war office that it was the successor craft that the UK needed in order to stand any chance in the war in May 1917 the war office requested its first batch of 250 planes over the course of 1917 well over 1300 would be produced and by the time production included on the plane there were almost 5 500 of The Craft serving in Britain as well as its Partners around the world upon his entry into service the sobwith camel was a formidable aircraft when compared to the standard of the day a one-seater aircraft with an overall length of 18 feet 9 inches the Camel had a wingspan of 28 feet exactly in a biplane Arrangement that was the World War One standard when it's set empty the plane weighed less than half a ton 930 pounds a number only achievable because of the wood and fabric design we mentioned earlier the plane sat at a height of eight feet six inches and its maximum weight was just under 1500 pounds and all things considered it wasn't really much larger than a heavy duty pickup truck Carol flew at a maximum speed of just 113 miles per hour but at the time you could refer to that as bloody quick its stall speed was just 48 miles an hour and it had a range of 300 miles and a server ceiling of 90 000 feet which had reached a climb rate of 1085 feet per minute it was armed with two 7.7 millimeter because machine guns and it could be fitted with up to four 20-pound bombs for ground attack purposes now all of these figures were impressive for the camel's time but where it really excelled was its engine power and Agility when Floyd probably the camel could outperform just about any of the planes that had come before it when intended service with the British military the camel was on paper the best thing the Brits had in the skies but its Pilots well they told a different story in the aftermath of bloody April and after multiple years of grueling aerial combat many of the raf's experienced Pilots had gone down with their pups and other aircraft before the camel widely became available that meant the camel was essentially being handed out to new pilots and even if they weren't complete amateurs they were unlikely to be able to fully understand what the camel was capable of or what it required of its Pilots see when we mentioned earlier that Sopwith had traded off easy piloting experience in exchange for better performance we absolutely meant it over the camel's lifetime more pilots would die trying to learn how to fly it than would die in active aerial combat a problem so bad that a young inexperienced Pilot's life expectancy in the cockpit was barely over two weeks this was largely due to our weight and inertia were distributed through the aircraft the camel's rotary engines caused a so-called gyroscopic effect where the presence of such a large rotating mass in the front of the plane caused it to Swerve from side to side and change its attitude that's its orientation relative to the Horizon of the Earth when the plane turned sharply in Flight it would end up with its nose pointed up or down more than a pilot would have wanted and as a result the pilots had a tendency to overreact and lose control as Lieutenant Colonel La strange flight instructor at the time described young camel Pilots spun out at alarming rates during their first solo flights requiring the plane to have to be significantly Modified by Airfield engineers in order to introduce trailer models where the flight instructor could join their student or take control if need be even after the problem of immediate spin-outs have been addressed though Pilots were forced to compensate for the camel strange Tendencies the torque of the engine made it very slow when making left turns so many Pilots cut Corners by necessity turning 270 degrees to the right instead of 90 degrees to the left the plane spun out almost as soon as they stalled and because of how heavy the fuel load in the camel's tail was Islands had to fly continually pushing the stick forward the camel's fuel efficiency too was nothing to write home about the plane guzzled Fuel and dripped oil constantly it would dive when it took those hard right turns and climb anytime it was expected to go left and any changes in weight to the aircraft would change yet again the way that it flew but if a pilot could gain fluency on the camel for a plane that seemed so desperately keen on turning right all the time well it was really good at turning right and its design afforded it a number of other aerodynamic edges over the competition mostly owing to how tightly packed the controls pilot engine and Armament were into a single point of balance near the front of the aircraft its turning radius was tight enough that it was all but guaranteed to gain favorable angles on the enemy during dogfights and at its best the camel was nothing short of acrobatic as author Robert Jackson put it in hands of a novice it displayed vicious characteristics that could make it a killer but under the firm Touch of a skilled pilot who knew how to turn its vices to his own an advantage it was one of the most superb Fighting Machines ever built the camel flew with the number four Squadron of the royal Naval Air Service where it quickly proved just how badly it could outclass German Fighters before long the camera would be flying in over 55 squadrons it was by the camel's intervention that the aerial battles of world war one went from one-sided to closely contested then one-sided in the other direction where the Allies would maintain air superiority through the end of the year and deepen before long the camel became valuable export product but Britain's allies most prominently Canada who made extensive use of the plane in their own Air Force Australia Belgium the United States also operated camels in large numbers and nations from Greece to the Netherlands to Georgia to the Soviet Union all made sure to have at least a few of the planes in their Arsenal the planes were adapted to include a number of different engines and some were fitted out with Lewis guns which could fire incendiary ammunition that could bring down German Zeppelins the camel was also adapted into a night fighter and it was used for experimentation in developing ground attack aircraft which used their machine guns for strafing and integrated more resilient armor plating given his ubiquity on the Western Front it should be no surprise that a number of Aces made their name behind the controls of the camel William Lancelot draw in a South African serving with the British royal Air Force claimed 39 at air victories and earned numerous combat decorations Major John English Gilmore Scotsman claimed his own set of 39 air-to-air kills including five on one day in July 1918 Englishman Henry winslowet of Suffolk famed 35 air-to-air victories including six in just a single day an Australian pilot Harry cobby LED his nation's Aces with 29 victories but it was the camel's Canadian Aces who stood out Above the Rest led by William Barker who shot down 46 enemy planes behind the Stick of just one aircraft his camel number b6313 which is today's most successful single fighter aircraft in Royal Air Force history cementing his legacy even and more Barker never lost a single wing man on his missions and never allowed a single aircraft under his escort to be shot down if you've got a time machine and happened to be a World War One combat pilot do make friends with Billy Barker two other Canadians made themselves famous and camel Donald McLaren with most of his 54 air-to-air kills coming during his time in the camel and Roy Brown who shot down and defeated the notorious Red Baron the camel also played an outside role in intercepting and defeating German bombing raids where they were especially Adept at shooting down more durable heavy bombers and when those bombing squadrons switched into night attacks the camels were able to follow with seven camel squadrons proving more than capable of keeping OverWatch on the British home Islands they were also integrated as attack craft for both naval ships and airships on the high seas the camel was adapted to launch from turrets of Warships and it was welcomed as a centerpiece on some of the world's first aircraft carriers they were also used in experimental testing as a parasite fighter hanging off an Airship this tactic wouldn't ever be adopted at a large scale but that certainly wasn't the fault of the camels of course the rapid pace of fighter development in World War One didn't simply stop when the camel entered service and by the tail end of the war the camel 2 had been outmatched by Fighters like the Forker D7 in terms of climb rate and high altitude performance however it wasn't so outdated to be useless and the camel ended up proving highly adaptable to ground attack roles at the perfect time to be used didn't force during the collapse of Germany's front lines using 25 pound bombs and strafing machine gun fire the camel was able to inflict heavy losses on German troops although low altitude strafing runs also brought pilots in range of direct fire from ground forces the camel was instrumental in putting a stop to Germany's last great offensive push in the spring of 1918 where their strafing far caused Chaos on the German side here the camels conceded air-to-air fight duties to other aircraft that could perform better at high altitude and as a result they were afforded nearly complete protection from enemy fighters who couldn't risk attacking the camels without establishing dominance at altitude as such the camel was one half of the Allied effort to maintain air superiority in the last months of the war which they did seamlessly and with great effect at the end of 1918 World War One finally came to a close but the camel's Mission didn't stop there after the Great War concluded the camel would see further action above Russia during an Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War there the Campbell continued its ground attack roll bombing Bolshevik bases and helping to lock down the Caspian Sea they proved to be Adept at hit and run tactics and were able to intensely harass Communist forces but eventually the balance of the Civil War became too much for the Allied intervention the RAF was forced to withdraw and any camels that they had to leave on the ground were destroyed in order to keep them out of Bolshevik hands and it was the conclusion of the war effort that ended up being the conclusion of the camel's time in service by 1920 the plane would be phased out and when the next war came it was far too outdated to be considered even a tiny bit useful but the camel has lived on since then as a pop culture icon in books movies and Other Stories recalling the Allied our war during World War One it makes good sense after all the Allied war effort cannot be understood without the camel it was simply too impactful to leave out and when compared to the other planes of the war the Sopwith Camel isn't just remembered as a valued team player it's remembered as the MVP the most successful aircraft of the entire War just a small handful of camels survived today museums and private collections in the Nations where they were used but the legacy of the camel is all but guaranteed to endure even after the final surviving aircraft is inevitably lost to history

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 864,947

Keywords: wwi aircraft sopwith camel biplane, sopwith camel documentary, sopwith camel, sopwith aviation company, sopwith pup, ww1 biplanes, biplane

Id: dEV8KPF6iTQ

Length: 15min 33sec (933 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 18 2023