FACTOID #53: If you thought Antarctica was inhospitable, think again - its land area is only ninety-eight percent ice. Reassuringly, the other 2% is categorised as "barren rock".
The Sopwith Aviation Company was a Britishaircraft company that manufactured aeroplanes for the British Military in the first world war, most famously the Sopwith Camel.
The company was founded in Kingston-upon-Thames by Sir Thomas Sopwith in June of 1912. The company's first factory premises opened that December in a disused roller skating rink. During the first world war, the company made more than 16,000 aircraft and employed 5,000 people. The company folded in 1920 as a consequence of the drop in orders after the end of the war as well as a large demand from the government for Excess War Profits Duty.
The company's chief test pilot was Harry Hawker who in 1920 with Sopwith, Fred Sigrist and Bill Eyre, formed H.G. Hawker Engineering, forerunner of the Hawker-Siddeley Aviation company which produced many famous fighter aircraft, including the Hurricane, Hunter and Harrier.
Sopwiths had been working at full capacity since 1914 with the Tabloid and its successors the Schneider and Baby, but these aircraft were scouts, not fighter planes.
In early 1915 Sigrist, Sopwith's chief designer, had saved the company by producing the 11/2 Strutter as a fighter and bomber, but there was still an urgent requirement for a single-seat fighter.
Sopwith was also involved in work on a radio controlled drone in 1916 and it seems likely that one of the Sparrows was cannibalised to make this airframe, which was built by apprentices and fitted with a Gnat engine (and also called the Sparrow!).
The Sopwith company was wound up in 1920 after failing to achieve sufficient success with civilian products (which had prompted the purchase of ABC Motors in 1919) to compensate for the drop in military aircraft orders after the end of the War and a potential large demand from the government for Excess War Profits Duty.
The Sopwith "Schneider" (a float-equipped Sopwith Tabloid) at the 1914 Schneider Trophy in Monaco.
Sopwith attempted to produce aircraft for the civil market based on their wartime types, such as the Dove derivative of the Pup and the Swallow, a single-winged Camel, but the wide availability of war-surplus aircraft at knock-down prices meant this was never economic.
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