AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 17 / 243

Plate 17 of 243 · Pioneers · Single-seat scout

Sopwith Tabloid

Tabloid (1914), RNAS 168, painted as 168, the Sopwith Tabloid reproduction at Stow Maries Great War Aerodrome, built in the late 1970s and flown as G-BFDE until 1982, then shown for many years by the RAF Museum at Hendon before moving to Stow Maries in 2023; it represents the RNAS Tabloid that Flight Lieutenant Reginald Marix flew to bomb the Zeppelin shed at Düsseldorf on 8 October 1914: Harry Hawker and Fred Sigrist’s single-seat scout, a small equal-span biplane with wing warping for roll control, a slab-sided fuselage, a rounded tailplane and comma rudder, an 80 hp Gnome rotary under a horseshoe cowl and a twin-wheel chassis with long anti-nose-over skids, shown standing tail-down on its wheels and tail skid as displayed: clear-doped linen wings, tail and rear fuselage, a bare aluminium cowl and forward fuselage, a black ‘168’ on both sides of the rudder, varnished spruce struts, legs and skids, aluminium wheel discs and a mahogany propeller, with no roundels (shape from a published three-view scaled to the 25 ft 6 in span, checked against photographs of 168).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as 168, the Sopwith Tabloid reproduction at Stow Maries Great War Aerodrome, built in the late 1970s and flown as G-BFDE until 1982, then shown for many years by the RAF Museum at Hendon before moving to Stow Maries in 2023; it represents the RNAS Tabloid that Flight Lieutenant Reginald Marix flew to bomb the Zeppelin shed at Düsseldorf on 8 October 1914: Harry Hawker and Fred Sigrist’s single-seat scout, a small equal-span biplane with wing warping for roll control, a slab-sided fuselage, a rounded tailplane and comma rudder, an 80 hp Gnome rotary under a horseshoe cowl and a twin-wheel chassis with long anti-nose-over skids, shown standing tail-down on its wheels and tail skid as displayed: clear-doped linen wings, tail and rear fuselage, a bare aluminium cowl and forward fuselage, a black ‘168’ on both sides of the rudder, varnished spruce struts, legs and skids, aluminium wheel discs and a mahogany propeller, with no roundels (shape from a published three-view scaled to the 25 ft 6 in span, checked against photographs of 168). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (671 KB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (Tabloid, Schneider); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Tabloid (1914), RNAS 168 modelled here.

History

The Tabloid

In the autumn of 1913 Tom Sopwith’s small works at Kingston, with his engineer Fred Sigrist and his Australian test pilot Harry Hawker, built a two-seat biplane far smaller and cleaner than anything else then flying. It had a slab-sided fuselage with the pilot and passenger side by side, equal-span wings warped for roll control, an 80 hp Gnome rotary under a horseshoe cowl and a twin-wheel chassis with long skids to stop it nosing over. Hawker first flew it at Brooklands late in November, and at Farnborough it reached 92 mph with a passenger aboard and climbed at over 1,000 ft a minute, faster than the single-seat fighters the Army was then planning. The press called it the Tabloid, for its compact size.

Hawker shipped it to Australia for a season of exhibition flights over the winter, and the War Office and the Admiralty ordered single-seat versions. On floats, a Tabloid flown by Howard Pixton won the Schneider Trophy at Monaco on 20 April 1914 at an average of about 86 mph, the first British win in the contest, and the floatplane was put into production for the Royal Naval Air Service as the Sopwith Schneider. Later Tabloids had ailerons in place of wing warping.

About forty landplane Tabloids were built, and when war began in August 1914 a few went to France with the Royal Flying Corps and the RNAS as fast scouts. On 8 October 1914 two RNAS Tabloids flew from Antwerp to bomb the Zeppelin sheds at Cologne and Düsseldorf; Flight Lieutenant Reginald Marix, in 168, dropped his two 20 lb bombs on the Düsseldorf shed and destroyed the army airship Z IX inside it, the first Zeppelin destroyed by an aeroplane. The Tabloid led directly to the Schneider, the Baby and the Pup, and so to the long line of Sopwith fighters.

This airframe

Tabloid reproduction 168

168The airframe modelled

No original Tabloid survives. This full-size reproduction was built in the late 1970s and flown as G-BFDE until a heavy landing in 1982; it was then displayed for many years by the RAF Museum at Hendon, and in 2023 it moved to Stow Maries Great War Aerodrome in Essex. It is marked as 168, the RNAS Tabloid Marix flew to Düsseldorf. The model shows it as displayed, standing tail-down on its wheels and tail skid: clear-doped linen wings, tail and rear fuselage, a bare aluminium cowl and forward fuselage screwed along every panel edge, a black ‘168’ on both sides of the rudder, varnished spruce struts, legs and skids, aluminium wheel discs and a mahogany propeller, with no roundels; like the first Tabloids it has wing warping and no ailerons. The shape follows a published three-view scaled to the 25 ft 6 in span and was checked against photographs of 168.

See it at Stow Maries Great War Aerodrome

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

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

Every airframe and serial All 243 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.