AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 07 / 132

Plate 07 of 132 · Great War · Single-seat floatplane scout

Sopwith Baby

Sopwith Baby, painted as the Fleet Air Arm Museum’s Baby at Yeovilton, a composite built from parts of the Sopwith-built 8214 and 8215 and displayed as N2078 ‘The Jabberwock’, the Blackburn-built Baby of the War Flight at Killingholme and Hornsea Mere in 1918: the Royal Naval Air Service single-seat floatplane scout with a 130 hp Clerget rotary in a bare aluminium horseshoe cowl, a synchronised Lewis gun on the decking, Le Prieur rockets on the interplane struts, varnished wooden twin main floats and tail float; PC10 olive drab upper surfaces and fuselage, clear-doped undersides, roundels on the fuselage sides, upper wing and lower wing undersides, blue, white and red rudder stripes, and the serial ‘N-2078’ with the name ‘The Jabberwock’ in white on the fuselage.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as the Fleet Air Arm Museum’s Baby at Yeovilton, a composite built from parts of the Sopwith-built 8214 and 8215 and displayed as N2078 ‘The Jabberwock’, the Blackburn-built Baby of the War Flight at Killingholme and Hornsea Mere in 1918: the Royal Naval Air Service single-seat floatplane scout with a 130 hp Clerget rotary in a bare aluminium horseshoe cowl, a synchronised Lewis gun on the decking, Le Prieur rockets on the interplane struts, varnished wooden twin main floats and tail float; PC10 olive drab upper surfaces and fuselage, clear-doped undersides, roundels on the fuselage sides, upper wing and lower wing undersides, blue, white and red rudder stripes, and the serial ‘N-2078’ with the name ‘The Jabberwock’ in white on the fuselage. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.1 MB)

Data plate

Specification

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

History

The Baby

The Baby grew out of the Sopwith Tabloid, whose floatplane version won the Schneider Trophy at Monaco in April 1914. The Royal Naval Air Service ordered the floatplane as the Sopwith Schneider, and in 1915 Sopwith gave it a more powerful Clerget rotary, a better cowling and other refinements. The new aircraft, also known as the Admiralty 8200 Type, was a small single-bay biplane of wood and fabric with two main floats and a tail float.

Babies flew from seaplane carriers, cruisers and coastal air stations around Britain and in the Mediterranean. They hunted U-boats and Zeppelins, scouted ahead of the fleet and dropped small bombs. A single Lewis gun was mounted either above the fuselage or over the upper wing, and some carried Le Prieur rockets on the interplane struts for attacking airships, although the extra weight often stopped a Baby from getting off the water.

The Royal Naval Air Service ordered 286: Sopwith built 100 at Kingston and Blackburn built 186 at Leeds, many with later improvements. Fairey and Parnall built a reworked version, the Hamble Baby, and Ansaldo built 100 under licence in Italy. Babies also served in France, Greece, Chile, Norway and the United States, and the Norwegian navy flew them until 1930.

This airframe

Baby “N2078”

N2078The airframe modelled

The Fleet Air Arm Museum’s Baby is a composite, built round original parts of 8214 and 8215, two of the first Babies made by Sopwith at Kingston. In the 1970s it was shown in clear dope as 8215. It now wears the markings of N2078, a Blackburn-built Baby that flew with the War Flight at Killingholme and Hornsea Mere in 1918 under the name “The Jabberwock”. The model shows it as displayed at Yeovilton: olive-drab upper surfaces and fuselage, clear-doped undersides, a bare aluminium cowl, varnished wooden floats and struts, and Le Prieur rockets on the interplane struts. The Clerget inside the cowl and the shape of the Lewis gun on the decking are based on only a few photographs.

See it at Fleet Air Arm Museum

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Baby in 2 UK collections. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 132 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.