AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 22 / 146

Plate 22 of 146 · Great War · Single-seat fighter

Sopwith Snipe

Sopwith 7F.1 Snipe, painted as E6655, the Sopwith 7F.1 Snipe displayed by the RAF Museum: the Camel’s successor of 1918 and the RAF’s standard single-seat fighter until 1926, a two-bay biplane with horn-balanced overhanging ailerons, a 230 hp Bentley BR2 rotary in a round aluminium cowling and twin Vickers guns under a humped decking; shown as reconstructed by The Vintage Aviator in New Zealand in 2010–12 around original Snipe parts, including its engine, propeller, struts and tail surfaces, and finished as Dermot Boyle’s ‘B’ of No. 1 Squadron at Hinaidi, Iraq, in 1926: silver-doped fabric overall with a bare aluminium cowling, yellow fin and rudder horn, blue, white and red rudder stripes carrying a black ‘E’ over ‘6655’, a black ‘B’ ahead of the fuselage roundel and ‘E6655’ low on the rear fuselage, roundels on the fuselage, on top of the upper wing and under the lower wing, an outline ‘B’ under the starboard lower wing and yellow wheel covers.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as E6655, the Sopwith 7F.1 Snipe displayed by the RAF Museum: the Camel’s successor of 1918 and the RAF’s standard single-seat fighter until 1926, a two-bay biplane with horn-balanced overhanging ailerons, a 230 hp Bentley BR2 rotary in a round aluminium cowling and twin Vickers guns under a humped decking; shown as reconstructed by The Vintage Aviator in New Zealand in 2010–12 around original Snipe parts, including its engine, propeller, struts and tail surfaces, and finished as Dermot Boyle’s ‘B’ of No. 1 Squadron at Hinaidi, Iraq, in 1926: silver-doped fabric overall with a bare aluminium cowling, yellow fin and rudder horn, blue, white and red rudder stripes carrying a black ‘E’ over ‘6655’, a black ‘B’ ahead of the fuselage roundel and ‘E6655’ low on the rear fuselage, roundels on the fuselage, on top of the upper wing and under the lower wing, an outline ‘B’ under the starboard lower wing and yellow wheel covers. 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 7F.1 Snipe modelled here.

History

The Snipe

The Snipe was Herbert Smith’s successor to the Camel, designed at Kingston in the autumn of 1917 round W. O. Bentley’s new BR2, the most powerful rotary engine built in Britain. It kept the Camel’s layout of a short fuselage, twin Vickers guns and a rotary in a round cowling, but had a deeper, rounder fuselage, two-bay wings and a better view for the pilot, with his head close under a cut-out in the centre section. The first prototype flew late in 1917, and after changes to the wings and tail, including larger horn-balanced ailerons, it was ordered in quantity in the spring of 1918.

It was not much faster than the Camel, but it climbed better, was far easier to fly and could fight at greater heights. Snipes reached No. 43 Squadron and No. 4 Squadron of the Australian Flying Corps in France in the autumn of 1918, followed by No. 208 Squadron, and saw only a few weeks of fighting before the Armistice. Orders were cut back sharply after the war, though many more had been built by 1919.

In the run-down after the war the Snipe was chosen as the RAF’s standard single-seat fighter, and for most of the early 1920s it was the only one in service. Snipes flew with squadrons at home, with the Army of the Rhine and in Iraq, where No. 1 Squadron kept them at Hinaidi until 1926. Gloster Grebes and Armstrong Whitworth Siskins replaced them in that year, and the last were used as trainers.

This airframe

Snipe “E6655”

E6655The airframe modelled

The RAF Museum’s Snipe is a reconstruction, built by The Vintage Aviator in New Zealand in 2010–12 round original parts held by the museum: a Humber-built Bentley BR2, a Snipe propeller, struts, parts of the wings and ailerons, and Snipe tail surfaces that had been fitted to the Shuttleworth Collection’s Sopwith Dove. Most of the fuselage is new. It has been at Hendon since October 2012. It is painted as E6655, aircraft ‘B’ of No. 1 Squadron at Hinaidi in Iraq in 1926, flown by Dermot Boyle, later Chief of the Air Staff. The model shows it as displayed: silver-doped fabric overall, a bare aluminium cowling, a yellow fin and rudder horn, a black ‘B’ beside the fuselage roundel, the serial on the rear fuselage and the rudder, an outlined ‘B’ under the starboard lower wing and yellow wheel covers.

See it at Royal Air Force Museum London

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

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

Every airframe and serial All 146 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.