The Sopwith 8F.1 Snail was a prototype
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
Fighter aircraft
Fighter aircraft are fixed-wing military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat. In military conflict, the role of fighter aircraft is to establish air superiority of the battlespace. Domination of the airspace above a battlefield ...
of the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
. It was unsuccessful, being abandoned due to an unreliable engine.
Development and design
The Sopwith 8F.1 Snail was designed by
Herbert Smith
Herbert Smith LLP was a multinational law firm headquartered in London, United Kingdom. The firm was founded in the City of London in 1882 by Norman Herbert Smith and merged with the Australian law firm Freehills on 1 October 2012, forming Herber ...
of
Sopwith Aviation Company
The Sopwith Aviation Company was a British aircraft company that designed and manufactured aeroplanes mainly for the British Royal Naval Air Service, the Royal Flying Corps and later the Royal Air Force during the First World War, most famously ...
to meet the
Air Board Specification A.1A for a light fighter with superior performance to the
Sopwith Camel
The Sopwith Camel is a British First World War single-seat biplane fighter aircraft that was introduced on the Western Front in 1917. It was developed by the Sopwith Aviation Company as a successor to the Sopwith Pup and became one of the b ...
. Herbert Smith designed a small single-bay
biplane
A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two main wings stacked one above the other. The first powered, controlled aeroplane to fly, the Wright Flyer, used a biplane wing arrangement, as did many aircraft in the early years of aviation. While ...
, powered by the 170 hp (127 kW)
ABC Wasp
The ABC Wasp was an experimental 170 hp (127 kW) seven-cylinder radial engine designed by the noted British engineer Granville Bradshaw, and primarily built by ABC Motors Limited. An order for twelve experimental ABC Wasp engines was ...
radial engine
The radial engine is a reciprocating type internal combustion engine configuration in which the cylinders "radiate" outward from a central crankcase like the spokes of a wheel. It resembles a stylized star when viewed from the front, and is ca ...
. An initial order was placed on 31 October 1917 for six prototypes with a conventional wood and fabric framework structure, but this was revised in November to fit two aircraft with a
plywood
Plywood is a material manufactured from thin layers or "plies" of wood veneer that are glued together with adjacent layers having their wood grain rotated up to 90 degrees to one another. It is an engineered wood from the family of manufactured ...
monocoque
Monocoque ( ), also called structural skin, is a structural system in which loads are supported by an object's external skin, in a manner similar to an egg shell. The word ''monocoque'' is a French term for "single shell".
First used for boats, ...
fuselage.
[Mason 1992, pp.136–137.]
The first prototype, serial number ''C4284'', with the conventional fuselage (which resulted in the designation Snail Mk.II) flew in April 1918.
Its wings had slight (5 inches (12.7 mm))
back-stagger, with the pilot sitting under a large cut-out on the upper wing, so that his head would protrude through the cut-out. Armament was two
synchronised Vickers machine gun
The Vickers machine gun or Vickers gun is a Water cooling, water-cooled .303 British (7.7 mm) machine gun produced by Vickers Limited, originally for the British Army. The gun was operated by a three-man crew but typically required more me ...
s mounted within the fuselage, and a
Lewis gun mounted above the upper wing.
[Bruce 1969, pp.36–37.] A second prototype (serial number ''C4288''), with the monocoque fuselage (and thus designated Snail Mk. I) followed in May. As well as the fuselage, the Snail Mk.I differed as the wings, although using identical surfaces were rigged with 22 inches of conventional stagger, with the pilot's cockpit being behind the upper wings trailing edge.
[Bruce 1969, pp.38–39.]
Both prototypes were sent to
Martlesham Heath
Martlesham Heath village is situated 6 miles (10 km) east of Ipswich, in Suffolk, England. This was an ancient area of heathland and latterly the site of Martlesham Heath Airfield. A "new village" was established there in the mid-1970s and th ...
for official testing in May. Although performance was reasonable, being slightly faster than the Camel and climbing faster,
[Bruce 1969, p.39.] handling was poor, particularly at low speed, and as with the other Wasp engined fighters built to meet Specification A.1A, the Wasp engine proved unreliable,
with the competition being abandoned in October 1918.
The two complete prototypes were broken up for firewood in November 1919.
[Bruce 1969, pp.39–40.]
Specifications (Second prototype)
See also
Notes
References
*Bruce, J.M. ''British Aeroplanes 1914-18''. London:Putnam, 1957.
*Bruce, J.M. ''War Planes of the First World War: Fighters Volume Three''. London:Macdonald, 1969. .
*Mason, Francis K. ''The British Fighter since 1912''. Annapolis, USA:Naval Institute Press, 1992. .
External links
Snail Mk II photo
{{Sopwith Aviation Company aircraft
Snail
A snail is, in loose terms, a shelled gastropod. The name is most often applied to land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs. However, the common name ''snail'' is also used for most of the members of the molluscan class Gastro ...
1910s British fighter aircraft
Biplanes with negative stagger
Single-engined tractor aircraft
Aircraft first flown in 1918