3D model
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A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as G-EBKY, The Shuttleworth Collection’s airworthy Sopwith Pup, built at Kingston in 1920 as a two-seat Sopwith Dove and converted back to Pup standard with an 80 hp Le Rhône rotary, painted as ‘9917’, a Beardmore-built Pup of the Royal Naval Air Service: khaki-green PC10 upper surfaces over clear-doped linen, a bare aluminium cowling and engine panels, roundels above the upper wing, below the lower wing and on the fuselage sides, a blue, white and red rudder, a Vickers gun ahead of the small windscreen and black ‘9917.’ on the rear fuselage, as it is flown from Old Warden. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (988 KB)
Data plate
Specification
- First flight9 February 1916
- Built1,770
- Top speed112 mph
- EngineLe Rhône 9C nine-cylinder rotary, 80 hp
- Crew1
- Wingspan8.08 m
- Length5.89 m
- Height2.87 m
- In service1916–1918
- RoleBiplane scout
- MakerSopwith Aviation Company, Britain
- UK collections3
First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Pup modelled here.
History
The Pup
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.
The Royal Naval Air Service had it first, in the autumn of 1916, and the Royal Flying Corps’ No. 54 Squadron took it to France that December. With a light wing loading it kept its height and handling at 15,000 ft, where the heavier Albatros scouts grew sluggish, and James McCudden wrote that it could turn twice to an Albatros’s once. By the summer of 1917 it was outgunned, and the Camel and the S.E.5a replaced it at the front by the end of the year. Sopwith, Standard, Whitehead and Beardmore built 1,770.
The Pup’s second career was at sea. In June 1917 Flight Commander Rutland flew one off a short platform on the cruiser HMS Yarmouth, and in August Flight Sub-Lieutenant Smart repeated the trick to shoot down the Zeppelin L 23. On 2 August 1917 Squadron Commander Edwin Dunning landed a Pup on the forward deck of HMS Furious while she steamed into wind, the first landing on a moving ship; he was killed trying it again five days later. Pups with skid undercarriages went on to serve as deck-landing trainers, and others flew with Home Defence squadrons against the Gotha raids on London.
This airframe
Pup G-EBKY (‘9917’)
G-EBKY is the only genuine Sopwith Pup still flying. It was built at Kingston in 1920 as a two-seat Sopwith Dove, the civil version of the Pup, and Richard Shuttleworth bought it in the 1930s and had it converted back to a single-seat Pup with an 80 hp Le Rhône. It has flown from Old Warden, Bedfordshire, for most of the time since, for many years marked as N5180 and, since its last restoration, as 9917, a Beardmore-built Pup of the Royal Naval Air Service. The model shows it in that scheme: khaki-green PC10 dope on the upper surfaces over clear-doped linen sides and undersides, a bare aluminium cowling and engine panels, roundels on top of the upper wing, under the lower wing and on the fuselage sides, a blue, white and red rudder, a Vickers gun ahead of the small windscreen, varnished spruce struts and black “9917.” on the rear fuselage.
Where to see one
In the gazetteer
The gazetteer records the Pup in 3 UK collections. The airframe modelled here is marked.