Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!bellcore!att!cbnews!military
From: cperlebe@encad.Wichita.NCR.COM (Chris Perleberg)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Surprise in air combat
Message-ID: <10240@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 14 Oct 89 01:56:32 GMT
References: <9876@cbnews.ATT.COM> <10185@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM
Organization: NCR Corporation Wichita, KS
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Approved: military@att.att.com



From: cperlebe@encad.Wichita.NCR.COM (Chris Perleberg)

In article <10185@cbnews.ATT.COM> adrian%cs.heriot-watt.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK (Adrian Hurt) writes:
>
>>One final point on this,  wasn't the Sopwith Pup replaced by the Sopwith 
>>Camel which was very tricky to fly, but highly maneuverable? 
>
>It was indeed.
>
Not quite.  If I recall, the Pup was never accepted by the RFC, which at 
the time was relying on Nieuport 17s, Fe-2Bs, and DH-2s.  All of these 
aircraft were dog meat for the Albatros D-IIIs then in service with the 
Germans (early 1917).  For inter-service rivalry reasons, the RFC refused 
to buy a Sopwith product.  The RNAS did buy some Pups, and when things 
got really bad (they didn't call April 1917 "Bloody April" for nothing), 
the RNAS squadrons were called in to help stabilize the situation. 

I think the RFC also refused to buy the Sopwith Triplane, which was also 
picked up by the RNAS and flown with great success by the "Black Flight" 
of Raymond Collishaw (which went up against von Richtofen's Jasta several 
times).  Anyway, the RFC finally wised up and bought the Camel, but not 
as a replacement for the Pup.  It was the first two gun fighter purchased 
by the RFC (the SE 5 had two guns, but one was mounted on the top wing).  

The Camel, therefore, replaced a bunch of obsolete aircraft that had 
already been 6 months too long in service. 

And it was very tricky to fly, having a marked tendency to "precess"
into the ground if you tried to turn against the torque of the rotary
engine.  I guess pilots figured they had a better chance of surviving
the Camel then they did of surviving an attack by a Fokker D-7 while
flying a DH-2!

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Chris Perleberg
cperlebe@encad.wichita.ncr.com