Aircraft of the First World War

Geoffrey de Havilland designed the B.E.2 at the Royal Aircraft Factory at Farnborough, and it first flew in 1912. ‘B.E.’ stood for Blériot Experimental, the Factory’s name for an aeroplane with its propeller at the front. That August de Havilland set a British height record in one, and B.E.2s were among the first RFC aircraft to fly to France in 1914.

The B.E.2c was so stable that crews could fly it hands-off while they took photographs or sent artillery corrections by wireless.

2699 is a genuine B.E.2c built by Ruston, Proctor & Co. of Lincoln in about 1916.

Alliott Verdon Roe’s company designed the 504 as a two-seat tractor biplane, and it first flew at Brooklands in July 1913. It was light, simple and easy to fly, and the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service both bought it before the war. In November 1914 three RNAS 504s flew from Belfort to bomb the Zeppelin sheds at Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance, one of the first strategic bombing raids.

The long skid between the wheels, nicknamed the ‘toothpick’, stopped the 504K from tipping onto its nose when a pupil braked a landing too hard on rough grass.

G-ADEV is The Shuttleworth Collection’s airworthy 504K.

Frank Barnwell and the company’s test pilot Harry Busteed designed the Scout at Filton in late 1913 as a small, fast single-seater for racing and sport, and Busteed first flew it at Larkhill on 23 February 1914. It was shown at the Olympia Aero Show the next month, where its neat lines and 80 hp Gnome rotary earned it the nickname “Baby”. With larger wings it reached nearly 100 mph, very fast for 1914, and it was being prepared for races when war came that August and the War Office took over both of the improved Scout Bs.

On 3 November 1915 Flight Lieutenant H. F. Towler flew a Scout C off the short deck of the seaplane carrier HMS Vindex, the first take-off by a wheeled aeroplane from a British carrier.

A1742 is a static reproduction built in the early 1960s and recorded as BAPC 38.

Herbert Smith designed the Pup at Sopwith’s Kingston works as a small single-seat scout, and Harry Hawker flew the prototype in February 1916. Its official name was the Sopwith Scout, but it looked so much like a smaller 1½ Strutter that the pilots called it the Pup, and the name stuck. It was a plain, well-proportioned biplane with a single Vickers gun firing through the propeller and an 80 hp Le Rhône rotary, half the power of the Camel that followed it.

Dunning’s deck landings on HMS Furious had no arrester gear: a party of officers ran out, grabbed rope toggles on the Pup’s wings and held it down on the deck.

G-EBKY is the only genuine Sopwith Pup still flying.

Herbert Smith designed the Triplane at Kingston in 1916, using the fuselage, tail and engine installation of the Pup with three narrow-chord wings in place of two. The narrow wings gave the pilot a much better view than a biplane’s broad ones, and stacking three of them gave plenty of wing area in a short span, so the aircraft climbed and turned very well. Harry Hawker flew the prototype, N500, at Brooklands on 28 May 1916, and he was looping it within minutes of taking off.

The Triplane so impressed the Germans in 1917 that their aircraft makers produced a rash of triplane designs of their own; Fokker’s Dr.I was the only one built in large numbers.

N5912 is one of only three Triplanes built by Oakley & Co of Ilford, Essex, a firm with no previous aircraft experience whose contract was cancelled in October 1917.

The R.E.8 was designed at the Royal Aircraft Factory at Farnborough by John Kenworthy and Walter Barling to replace the B.E.2 in the Royal Flying Corps’ corps squadrons, the units that spotted for the artillery, took photographs and watched the trenches. The most important change was to put the observer behind the pilot, where he had a clear field of fire for a Lewis gun on a Scarff ring, while the pilot had a Vickers gun firing forward through the propeller. Frank Goodden flew the first prototype on 17 June 1916.

Crews nicknamed the R.E.8 the ‘Harry Tate’ after a music-hall comedian of the day, rhyming slang for its designation.

F3556 was built under contract by the Daimler Company at Coventry in 1918 and reached France on Armistice Day, still in its packing case, so it never saw action.

Frank Barnwell designed the M.1 at Filton in 1916 as a private venture: a clean, wire-braced shoulder-wing monoplane with a round fuselage, a large spinner and a rotary engine, and clear panels in the wing roots so the pilot could see downwards. Fred Raynham first flew the prototype, the Clerget-powered M.1A, on 14 July 1916. It was much faster than the biplane scouts of the day, and the War Office ordered four M.1Bs for evaluation, which confirmed a top speed of about 130 mph.

The M.1C was the only British monoplane fighter to see squadron service in the First World War; the RFC’s distrust of monoplanes kept it away from the Western Front.

C4918 is a reproduction built by members of the Northern Aeroplane Workshops at Mirfield, Yorkshire, the volunteer group that also built Shuttleworth’s Sopwith Triplane and Camel.

Frank Barnwell drew the Bristol Fighter at Filton in 1916 as a two-seat reconnaissance machine built around the new Rolls-Royce Falcon, and the prototype flew on 9 September 1916. Its odd arrangement was the point: the fuselage was slung midway between the wings, clear of the upper wing and carried on short struts above the lower one, so the pilot could see over the nose and the observer could swing his Lewis gun on a Scarff ring through most of the sky. A Vickers gun fired forward through the propeller.

William Leefe Robinson, who won the VC for shooting down the first German airship over Britain in 1916, was shot down and captured on the Bristol Fighter’s very first patrol over the Front.

D8096 is the only genuine Bristol Fighter still flying.

The S.E.5 was designed at the Royal Aircraft Factory at Farnborough by Henry Folland, John Kenworthy and Frank Goodden, and first flew in November 1916. Built round a geared Hispano-Suiza V-8, it was strong, stable and fast in a dive, and it made a steady gun platform.

The Lewis gun on its Foster mount could be pulled down so the pilot could change the drum, or fired upwards at an enemy beneath.

F904 is one of the few genuine S.E.5as left and is kept in flying condition by The Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden, Bedfordshire, with a Wolseley Viper engine.

Herbert Smith designed the Camel at Kingston as the Pup’s successor, and Harry Hawker flew the first one at Brooklands on 22 December 1916. Sopwith called it the F.1, but the metal fairing humped over the breeches of its two synchronised Vickers guns gave it the name that stuck. It was the first British fighter with twin synchronised guns as standard, and everything heavy, the rotary engine, the guns, the pilot and the fuel, sat within the front seven feet of a short, deep fuselage.

The Camel turned right so much faster than left that pilots who wanted to turn ninety degrees to the left often went round 270 degrees to the right instead.

G-BZSC is the Shuttleworth Collection’s airworthy Camel reproduction, built to the original drawings by the Northern Aeroplane Workshops of Batley, West Yorkshire, the volunteer group that had already built the Collection’s Sopwith Triplane.

Geoffrey de Havilland designed the DH.9 at Airco in 1917 as the successor to his DH.4 day bomber, and a converted DH.4 flew as the prototype from Hendon in July 1917. It kept the DH.4’s wings and tail but had a new fuselage, with the pilot moved aft to sit just in front of the observer and his Scarff ring, so the two could talk, instead of being separated by the main fuel tank. It was to have the new 300 hp BHP engine, built as the Siddeley Puma, and after the Gotha raids on London that summer the government ordered it in vast numbers to give the new Royal Air Force a bombing force of its own.

The two DH.9s at Duxford were found in 1999 in an elephant stable at the Maharaja’s fort in Bikaner, Rajasthan, where they had lain since arriving in India as an Imperial Gift after the First World War.

D5649 is one of a handful of DH.9s known to survive.

Fokker’s triplane answered the British Sopwith Triplane, which had impressed German pilots in 1917. Reinhold Platz’s design used three short, deep cantilever wings with no bracing wires, giving a phenomenal rate of climb and turn at the cost of speed.

The Dr.I had a small aerofoil around its axle, in effect a fourth wing.

Richthofen’s 425/17 left the factory in Fokker’s streaked olive and was doped red all over by Jasta 11.