AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 08 / 134

Plate 08 of 134 · Great War · Two-seat fighter and bomber

Sopwith 1½ Strutter

Sopwith 1½ Strutter, painted as A8226, a Sopwith 1½ Strutter of C Flight, No. 45 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, shot down near Ypres in May 1917: the two-seat fighter and bomber of 1916, the first British aircraft with a gun synchronised to fire through the propeller, named for its W-shaped cabane of short and long struts, with a 130 hp Clerget rotary in a horseshoe cowl, a Vickers gun ahead of the pilot and a Lewis gun on the observer’s Scarff ring; shown as the RAF Museum’s reproduction at Cosford, built in 1977–80 by Viv Bellamy’s team at Land’s End to original Sopwith drawings: khaki-brown PC10 fuselage, cowling and upper surfaces over clear-doped linen undersides, varnished orange spruce interplane struts, roundels on the fuselage sides and lower wings with a white band behind the fuselage roundel, a white and red fin carrying the serial ‘A.8226’, blue, white and red rudder stripes and red and white wheel covers; the roundels on top of the upper wing, which no photograph shows, follow RFC practice.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as A8226, a Sopwith 1½ Strutter of C Flight, No. 45 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, shot down near Ypres in May 1917: the two-seat fighter and bomber of 1916, the first British aircraft with a gun synchronised to fire through the propeller, named for its W-shaped cabane of short and long struts, with a 130 hp Clerget rotary in a horseshoe cowl, a Vickers gun ahead of the pilot and a Lewis gun on the observer’s Scarff ring; shown as the RAF Museum’s reproduction at Cosford, built in 1977–80 by Viv Bellamy’s team at Land’s End to original Sopwith drawings: khaki-brown PC10 fuselage, cowling and upper surfaces over clear-doped linen undersides, varnished orange spruce interplane struts, roundels on the fuselage sides and lower wings with a white band behind the fuselage roundel, a white and red fin carrying the serial ‘A.8226’, blue, white and red rudder stripes and red and white wheel covers; the roundels on top of the upper wing, which no photograph shows, follow RFC practice. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.0 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Sopwith 1½ Strutter modelled here.

History

The 1½ Strutter

The 1½ Strutter was Sopwith’s first purpose-built military two-seater, designed late in 1915 for the Royal Naval Air Service. Its name came from the cabane: from each side of the fuselage a short strut ran in to the centre section and a long one out to the upper wing, so that from the front the struts formed a W, half a set more than a usual cabane. It was a neat single-bay biplane of wood and fabric with a rotary engine in a horseshoe cowl, the pilot under the upper wing and the observer behind him.

It was the first British aircraft to go into service with a machine gun synchronised to fire through the propeller, a Vickers ahead of the pilot, and the observer had a Lewis gun on a ring mounting. The RNAS used it from the spring of 1916, and its No. 3 Wing flew it on the first British long-range bombing raids against German industry that autumn. The RFC needed fighters urgently for the Somme and took over many naval machines; No. 70 Squadron took its first to France in the summer of 1916.

By the spring of 1917 the German Albatros fighters outclassed it, and Camels and Bristol Fighters replaced it on the Western Front. It went on with Home Defence squadrons, in the Aegean and at sea, flown off platforms on warships’ gun turrets and from HMS Furious. Britain built about 1,500, but France built far more, about 4,500 as fighters, bombers and reconnaissance machines, and Strutters also served with Russia, Belgium, the United States, Romania and Japan.

This airframe

1½ Strutter “A8226”

A8226The airframe modelled

The RAF Museum’s Strutter is a reproduction, built from original Sopwith drawings by Viv Bellamy’s team at Land’s End between 1977 and 1980 and registered G-BIDW. It flew twice, marked as 9382, before the museum bought it. At Cardington in 1981 its structure was checked against the original Kingston blueprints, and it was re-covered in Irish linen and fitted with a 130 hp Clerget 9B. It was then painted as A8226, a Ruston Proctor-built Strutter of C Flight, No. 45 Squadron, shot down near Ypres on 27 May 1917. It was shown at Hendon from 1982 and is now at Cosford. The model shows it as displayed: khaki-brown fuselage and upper surfaces, clear-doped undersides, varnished interplane struts, a white band behind the fuselage roundel, the serial on a white and red fin, and the Lewis gun stowed upright on its Scarff ring. No photograph shows the top of the upper wing, so the roundels there follow RFC practice.

See it at Royal Air Force Museum Midlands

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the 1½ Strutter in one UK collection. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 134 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.