AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 06 / 64

Plate 06 of 64 · Great War · Biplane scout

Sopwith Camel

Camel F.1, painted as G-BZSC, The Shuttleworth Collection’s airworthy Sopwith Camel reproduction, begun by the Northern Aeroplane Workshops at Batley in 1995, completed at Old Warden and first flown on 18 May 2017 with a 130 hp Clerget 9B rotary, painted as D1851 ‘IKANOPIT’, a Ruston Proctor-built Camel of No. 70 Squadron RAF in France in 1918: khaki-brown PC10 dope over the fuselage, fin and upper surfaces with clear-doped linen undersides, a bare aluminium cowling, varnished plywood side panels with white ‘IKANOPIT’ below the cockpit, a white ‘X’ and white-outlined roundel on the fuselage, three white No. 70 Squadron bars ahead of the tailplane, white ‘D1851’ on the fin, a blue, white and red rudder, roundels on both wings and twin Vickers guns under the hump, as it is flown from Old Warden.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as G-BZSC, The Shuttleworth Collection’s airworthy Sopwith Camel reproduction, begun by the Northern Aeroplane Workshops at Batley in 1995, completed at Old Warden and first flown on 18 May 2017 with a 130 hp Clerget 9B rotary, painted as D1851 ‘IKANOPIT’, a Ruston Proctor-built Camel of No. 70 Squadron RAF in France in 1918: khaki-brown PC10 dope over the fuselage, fin and upper surfaces with clear-doped linen undersides, a bare aluminium cowling, varnished plywood side panels with white ‘IKANOPIT’ below the cockpit, a white ‘X’ and white-outlined roundel on the fuselage, three white No. 70 Squadron bars ahead of the tailplane, white ‘D1851’ on the fin, a blue, white and red rudder, roundels on both wings and twin Vickers guns under the hump, as it is flown from Old Warden. 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 (F.1); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Camel F.1 modelled here.

History

The Camel F.1

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 usual engine was the 130 hp Clerget, with the 110 hp Le Rhône and the 150 hp Bentley BR.1 as alternatives.

That concentration of weight behind a spinning rotary made the Camel the most agile and the most dangerous fighter of its day. The engine’s gyroscopic torque pulled the nose up in a left turn and down in a right one, so it turned right far faster than left, and pilots who mishandled it near the ground spun in. It killed many novices in training, but in the hands of a pilot who had mastered it the Camel out-turned anything the Germans flew. No. 4 Squadron of the Royal Naval Air Service took it into action in June 1917 and No. 70 Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps followed in July. Camels were credited with 1,294 enemy aircraft, more than any other Allied type, and Sopwith and eight sub-contractors built 5,490.

In 1918 Camels flew low-level ground attack over the Cambrai and March offensives, hunted Gothas at night as the ‘Comic’ conversion with two Lewis guns above the wing, and Captain Roy Brown of No. 209 Squadron was credited with Manfred von Richthofen on 21 April, though ground fire probably killed him. The naval 2F.1 with a shorter span flew off turret platforms on battleships and cruisers and off lighters towed by destroyers, and on 19 July 1918 seven of them from HMS Furious bombed the Zeppelin sheds at Tondern, the first carrier strike in history. The Snipe replaced the Camel in 1918–19, and genuine survivors are rare: F6314 at the RAF Museum in London and the 2F.1 N6812 at the Imperial War Museum are two of them.

This airframe

Camel F.1 G-BZSC (‘D1851’)

D1851The airframe modelled

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. Work began in 1995 and the unfinished airframe moved to Old Warden, Bedfordshire, in 2013 for completion by the Collection’s own engineers; it first flew on 18 May 2017 with a 130 hp Clerget 9B rotary, one of very few Camels flying anywhere on an original engine type. It is painted as D1851, a Ruston Proctor-built Camel of No. 70 Squadron RAF in France in 1918 that carried the name IKANOPIT, ‘I can hop it’. The model shows it as flown today: khaki-brown PC10 dope over the fuselage, fin, tailplane and the upper surfaces of both wings over clear-doped linen undersides, a bare aluminium cowling, varnished plywood side panels with white “IKANOPIT” below the cockpit, a white “X” and a white-outlined roundel on the fuselage, three white No. 70 Squadron bars ahead of the tailplane, white “D1851” on the fin, a blue, white and red rudder, roundels above both wings and below the lower wing, varnished spruce struts and twin Vickers guns under the hump.

See it at The Shuttleworth Collection

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Camel F.1 in 3 UK collections. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 64 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.