Sopwith Pup
The little British scout of 1916 that pilots adored: underpowered and lightly armed, yet so light on the controls and so high-flying that a good pilot could, as one ace put it, almost land it on a tennis court — and it went on to make aviation history at sea.
The Sopwith Pup's story: the gentle little scout that won a war's affection
Officially it was the Sopwith Scout. Almost nobody called it that. To the pilots and mechanics of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service it was the Pup — a fond, unofficial nickname born because the trim little single-seater looked like the small offspring of Sopwith's two-seat 1½ Strutter that came before it. The name stuck so firmly that the Air Board is said to have disliked it, and it began a Sopwith tradition of animal names that would run through the Camel, the Snipe, the Dolphin and the Salamander.
Designed by Sopwith's chief draughtsman Herbert Smith and first flown in early 1916, the Pup was a fabric-covered wooden biplane of almost perfect proportions. It had equal-span wings, ailerons on both upper and lower planes, and a cut-out in the trailing edge of the top wing so the pilot could see upward. It weighed almost nothing — empty, around 787 lb (357 kg) — and that lightness was the whole point. With only a modest 80-horsepower rotary engine, the Pup could never be fast. But a feather-light wing loading gave it two priceless gifts: it climbed and held altitude better than heavier machines, and it handled with a sweetness that pilots wrote home about.
It reached the Western Front in the autumn of 1916 with both the RFC and the RNAS, and for a few golden months it was genuinely competitive. Naval Pup squadrons scored heavily over the Somme and Flanders through the winter of 1916–17; one RNAS squadron claimed around twenty victories before the year was out. German airmen took the little scout seriously. The Pup's single synchronised Vickers gun was a light punch by 1917 standards, but in a turning fight its manoeuvrability and ceiling let a skilled pilot dictate terms.
That golden spell did not last. Honesty demands it be said plainly: by the spring and summer of 1917 the Pup was outclassed. New German fighters — the Albatros D.III and D.V with their more powerful in-line engines and twin machine guns — simply had more speed and more firepower. The Pup could still out-turn them, but it could no longer catch them, run from them, or match their weight of fire. Sopwith's own answer, the Triplane and then the immortal Camel, took over the front-line fight, and the Pup was steadily withdrawn.
It did not retire quietly. Pups became the favourite mounts of Home Defence flights guarding Britain against Zeppelins and Gotha bombers, and thousands of new pilots learned to fly on them at training schools, where the type's forgiving manners made it beloved all over again. And out at sea, the Pup was about to write one of the most important — and most poignant — chapters in the history of naval aviation.
To understand the Pup, it helps to understand the moment that made it. In 1915 and early 1916 the “Fokker Scourge” had shown what a single synchronised machine gun firing through the propeller could do, and every air arm scrambled for a true single-seat fighter to answer it. The Sopwith Aviation Company at Kingston upon Thames had already built the two-seat 1½ Strutter — itself a landmark, with a synchronised gun and airbrakes. The Pup was, in effect, that concept distilled down to one seat and one gun: smaller, lighter, cleaner, and built around agility rather than brute force. It was the right aeroplane at exactly the right time, and it arrived just as the great air battles over the Somme were reaching their height.
Both British air services flew it, and the distinction matters to the history. The Royal Flying Corps, the army's air arm, and the Royal Naval Air Service, the navy's, each operated Pup squadrons over the Western Front, often side by side. It was the naval squadrons — No. 3, No. 8 and No. 9 (Naval) among them — that made some of the type's most striking scores, and it was the RNAS that would take the Pup to sea. When the two services merged to form the Royal Air Force on 1 April 1918, the Pup was already yielding the front line to its own descendants.
Those descendants are part of the Pup's story too. Herbert Smith's team followed it with the Sopwith Triplane — whose three narrow wings gave an astonishing rate of climb — and then with the Sopwith Camel, the hump-backed, twin-Vickers killer that would be credited with more air-to-air victories than any other British fighter of the war. The Camel was faster and far more heavily armed, but it was also vicious to fly, its concentrated masses and engine torque killing many trainees. The gentle Pup, by contrast, was the aeroplane on which those pilots first learned they could trust an aeroplane at all. In a real sense the Pup trained the men who flew the Camel into legend.
01The Sopwith Pup's name: why the “Scout” became the “Pup”
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The aircraft's official designation was the Sopwith Scout (the works type number 9901 is also seen in records). The affectionate name “Pup” arose in service because the new single-seater looked like a scaled-down child of the earlier two-seat Sopwith 1½ Strutter — as if the big machine had produced a pup. The nickname was never official and, by some accounts, was actively disliked by the authorities as undignified. It proved unstoppable anyway, and it set the pattern for later Sopwith animal names.
The naming matters for anyone researching the type: contemporary official documents, contracts and museum records may list it as “Scout” or by type number, while pilots' logbooks, letters and virtually all popular history call it the Pup. Both refer to the same aeroplane.
02The Sopwith Pup in combat: a brilliant 1916, an outclassed 1917
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The Pup's front-line effectiveness has to be told in two halves. In late 1916 and early 1917 it was one of the best fighters over the Western Front. Its light wing loading gave it a superb rate of climb and a high ceiling for its day, and its gentle handling let good pilots exploit both. RNAS and RFC Pup units scored well and earned the respect of their opponents; Manfred von Richthofen is reported to have remarked, after meeting one in the air, that he could see the enemy machine was superior to his own in that fight.
But the margins were thin, and German engine and armament development moved fast. By mid-1917 the Albatros D.III and D.V outran and out-gunned the Pup, whose single Vickers and modest power left it unable to force a decision against a careful enemy. It was withdrawn from the main fighting front over the course of 1917. This is not a failure of the design so much as the brutal pace of wartime aeronautical progress: a first-class fighter of 1916 was simply an old one by 1918.
03The Sopwith Pup at sea: Dunning, HMS Furious and the first carrier landing
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The Pup's lasting place in history was won not in a dogfight but on a ship's deck. The Royal Naval Air Service used the light, slow-landing Pup for a series of pioneering shipborne experiments: aircraft were flown off short platforms built over the gun turrets of cruisers and battleships, and off towed lighters, to give the fleet its own fighter cover against Zeppelins.
On 2 August 1917, Squadron Commander Edwin Harris Dunning flew a Pup around the superstructure of the carrier HMS Furious and side-slipped down onto her forward flying-off deck while the ship steamed into wind — the first time any aircraft had been landed on a moving ship. Deck crew grabbed rope toggles fitted to the airframe to drag it down. It was a landmark moment in the birth of the aircraft carrier.
The story ends in tragedy, and it should be told honestly. Dunning was determined to prove the technique was repeatable. On 7 August 1917, on a further attempt, his engine choked at the critical moment, the Pup was blown over the side, and Dunning was drowned before he could be rescued. He was 25. His sacrifice directly informed the Royal Navy's conclusion that landing on a ship's forward deck, past the funnel and superstructure, was too dangerous — and pushed development toward the full-length flush flight deck that defines the aircraft carrier to this day.
How the Sopwith Pup was built: lightness as a weapon
The Pup's genius was restraint. Where later fighters chased power and firepower, the Pup chased balance — and for a season that balance made it the finest-handling scout in the sky.
A feather-light wooden biplane
Wire-braced spruce and ash structure, fabric covered, with equal-span single-bay wings and ailerons on all four wingtips. Empty weight was only about 787 lb (357 kg). The very low wing loading is what gave the Pup its climb, its ceiling and its famously gentle stall.
A modest rotary heart
Most Pups used the 80 hp Le Rhône 9C rotary; Clerget and Gnome rotaries appeared on other batches, and Home Defence machines later took the 100 hp Gnome Monosoupape. The whole engine spun with the propeller — light, but with strong gyroscopic effects a pilot had to master.
One gun, carefully synchronised
A single .303 in Vickers machine gun fired forward through the propeller arc using a synchronising gear. It was light by 1917 standards, but reliable. A few aircraft trialled an over-wing Lewis gun or Le Prieur anti-balloon rockets on the interplane struts.
04The Sopwith Pup's handling: why pilots loved it so much
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Almost every pilot who flew the Pup came away enchanted. The combination of light weight, generous wing area and well-harmonised controls made it responsive without being twitchy, and forgiving near the stall — a rare and precious quality in an era of unforgiving rotary-engined fighters. Its ability to hold height and keep manoeuvring where heavier machines mushed and sank made it feel, to a good pilot, almost unbeatable in a turning fight.
That reputation is why the Pup was so treasured as a trainer and Home Defence machine even after it left the front line: an aeroplane that flattered the novice and delighted the expert. Modern pilots of the surviving and replica Pups echo the same praise a century on.
05The Sopwith Pup's shipborne variants: skids, platforms and lighters
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Naval Pups were adapted in several ways for work at sea. Some carried a skid undercarriage in place of wheels for deck and platform operations; many flew from short wooden flying-off platforms erected over the gun turrets of cruisers and capital ships, turning almost any warship into a fighter carrier. Others were launched from lighters towed at speed behind destroyers. Flotation bags and other survival aids were trialled for ditching. These experiments — low-tech, brave and often improvised — laid the practical groundwork for carrier aviation.
06The Sopwith Pup's variants: from Le Rhône scout to naval and Home Defence machines
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Although the Pup looks like a single, unchanging shape, it was fielded in a family of subtly different forms. The standard land fighter carried the 80 hp Le Rhône 9C, while other production batches used the 80 hp Clerget or Gnome rotaries; supply, not preference, often decided which engine a given aircraft received. Home Defence Pups were re-engined with the more powerful 100 hp Gnome Monosoupape to claw for the altitude needed to reach raiders, at some cost in reliability and endurance.
Naval Pups formed a distinct sub-family: some had a skid undercarriage for platform and deck work, some carried flotation gear, and many were fitted with the toggles and quick-release arrangements needed for shipboard handling. There were also experimental and second-line uses — anti-balloon aircraft carrying Le Prieur rockets on the interplane struts, and machines fitted with an over-wing Lewis gun. The two-seat civil Sopwith Dove of the early 1920s was a direct post-war derivative of the Pup, and — as the Shuttleworth Collection's airworthy aircraft shows — a Dove could later be rebuilt back into Pup configuration.
07The Sopwith Pup versus the Sopwith Camel: gentleness against ferocity
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The two most famous Sopwith fighters make a revealing pair. The Pup came first: light, forgiving, one gun, modest power, and beloved for its manners. The Camel followed: heavier, faster, armed with twin synchronised Vickers guns, and built around a concentration of engine, guns, pilot and fuel that gave it a savage turn to the right — and a reputation for killing careless or inexperienced pilots.
In the hands of an expert the Camel was the deadlier weapon, and it is credited with more victories than any other British fighter of the war. But the Pup was the better teacher and the sweeter aeroplane, and many pilots who flew both remembered the Pup with the greater affection. The progression from Pup to Triplane to Camel is a compact lesson in how quickly the demands of air fighting escalated between 1916 and 1918: each aircraft traded a little more of the Pup's gentleness for a little more lethality.
08The Sopwith Pup's operating costs: what a 1916 scout is worth today
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The original unit cost of a Sopwith Pup is not reliably recorded in the sources we would cite, and wartime accounting, inflation and different makers make any single 1916 figure meaningless. We have therefore left the historic purchase price marked as not reliably recorded rather than invent one.
What can be said, clearly flagged as an estimate, is the modern cost of ownership: building a new airworthy Sopwith Pup reproduction to museum standard is widely estimated to cost on the order of several hundred thousand pounds — roughly £250,000 to £400,000 or more depending on engine, fit and finish — before the considerable running and insurance costs of operating a fragile, rotary-engined antique. Original airframes are effectively priceless and are not sold.
09The Sopwith Pup's legacy: how a little scout shaped the aircraft carrier
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The Pup's most enduring monument is not on the Western Front but at sea. Its slow, controllable approach made it the ideal test-bed for the very first attempts to fly aircraft from ships, and Dunning's landing on HMS Furious in August 1917 proved — at the cost of his life a few days later — both that it could be done and that doing it over a ship's superstructure was lethally dangerous. That hard lesson pushed the Royal Navy toward the flush, full-length flight deck: Furious herself was rebuilt, and the world's first true flush-deck carrier, HMS Argus, followed in 1918.
Every carrier landing since — every arrestor wire, every angled deck, every naval jet trapping aboard a supercarrier — descends from those improvised experiments with a fragile little wooden biplane. It is a remarkable legacy for an aircraft that was already obsolete as a fighter when it made history.
Sopwith Pup specifications: dimensions, performance and cost
Figures are for a representative 80 hp Le Rhône production Pup. Several values are contested between sources and are flagged; performance varied with engine, load and individual airframe.
Baseline note: the figures describe the Pup as built around the 80 hp Le Rhône 9C rotary, the engine of the prototype and of most production aircraft, as tabulated by Thetford in British Naval Aircraft since 1912. Deltas for the 100 hp Gnome Monosoupape Home Defence aircraft, for the skid-undercarriage shipboard Pup and for the Beardmore W.B.III derivative are in grey. Climb is given as time to a stated height and endurance in place of range, which is how figures of this period were quoted; where a source states no altitude for a speed, this table says so rather than implying one.
Dimensions & weights
- Crew
- 1
- Length
- 5.89 m (19 ft 3.75 in)
- Wingspan
- 8.08 m (26 ft 6 in), upper and lower equal. The Beardmore W.B.III shipboard derivative spanned 7.62 m (25 ft 0 in) with no stagger, so that the wings would fold.
- Height
- 2.87 m (9 ft 5 in)
- Wing area
- 23.60 m² (254 sq ft) — a very large wing for an aeroplane of this weight, and the single most important number on this page
- Wing cellule
- Single-bay staggered biplane with ailerons on both upper and lower planes, wooden framework with fabric covering
- Undercarriage
- Cross-axle main gear on V-struts from the lower longerons — shipboard aircraft were fitted instead with skids engaging fore-and-aft deck wires, and were redesignated Sopwith 9901a
- Empty weight
- 357 kg (787 lb) per Thetford. Other standard tables give 388 kg (856 lb); the difference is probably equipment fit rather than error.
- Loaded weight
- 556 kg (1,225 lb)
- Wing loading at loaded weight
- 23.4 kg/m² (4.8 lb/sq ft) — roughly half that of an Albatros D.III, and the reason the Pup kept flying properly in air where heavier machines were merely staggering along
- Power loading
- 6.94 kg/hp (15.3 lb/hp, quoted the other way round as 0.0654 hp/lb)
- Production
- 1,796 built — 96 by Sopwith, 850 by the Standard Motor Co., 820 by Whitehead Aircraft and 30 by William Beardmore & Co. Of these, 1,770 were single-seat Scouts; ten more airframes were completed as the two-seat civil Dove.
- Service dates
- First flight February 1916; operational trials with "A" Naval Squadron from May 1916; Western Front from October 1916; withdrawn from France December 1917
Performance
- Maximum speed
- 180 km/h (112 mph). Thetford states no altitude for this figure, and neither do most period tables; treat it as a low-level or best-height number, not a fighting speed.
- Maximum speed, alternative source
- 171 km/h (106 mph), the figure carried by The Aerodrome and several derived tables. The spread between authorities is about six per cent and cannot be resolved without knowing the altitude each was measured at.
- Time to 3,050 m
- 14 minutes (to 10,000 ft)
- Time to 4,910 m
- 35 minutes (to 16,100 ft) — the shape of that curve is the point: the Pup keeps climbing long after it has run out of anything resembling excess power
- Service ceiling
- 5,330 m (17,500 ft) per Thetford; 5,640 m (18,500 ft) is quoted elsewhere
- Endurance
- 3 hours
- Still-air range
- 542 km (337 miles), a paper figure derived from endurance rather than a flown one; the Pup was never a range aeroplane
- Performance above 4,570 m
- Above about 15,000 ft the Pup could out-turn and hold height with the Albatros D.III, an aircraft with roughly twice its power and twice its armament. This is the whole of the Pup's reputation in one line.
- Stability
- Pleasant and honest on all three axes but longitudinally unstable, which is a normal characteristic of the period rather than a defect
- Handling
- James McCudden: "it was so extremely light and well surfaced that after a little practice one could almost land it on a tennis court". The Vintage Aviator records it as fully aerobatic to 15,000 ft.
- Deck landing behaviour
- The low landing speed made the Pup the only British aeroplane of 1917 that could plausibly be flown onto a moving ship. Flying HMS Furious at 26 knots into a 21-knot wind reduced the closing speed over the deck to a few miles per hour.
Propulsion & systems
- Engine
- One 80 hp (60 kW) Le Rhône 9C nine-cylinder air-cooled rotary, the whole engine revolving with the propeller about a fixed crankshaft
- Engine dimensions
- Bore 105 mm (4.13 in), stroke 140 mm (5.51 in), capacity 10.89 l (664 cu in), compression 4.5:1
- Rated power
- 80 hp nominal; Lumsden records a maximum of 92 hp (69 kW) at 1,300 rpm. The 9C was marketed simply as the "Rhône 80 hp".
- Engine weight
- 121.5 kg (268 lb), diameter 94.5 cm (37.2 in)
- Valve gear and lubrication
- A single cam-operated rocker working both valves through one push-pull rod; castor oil on a total-loss system, mixed with the fuel and thrown out through the exhaust into the pilot's face
- Engine control
- No throttle in the modern sense. Power was set by fuel and air levers and trimmed by a blip switch that cut the ignition — which is precisely how a Pup was flown onto a deck.
- Alternative engines
- 100 hp (75 kW) Gnome Monosoupape on Home Defence aircraft, recognisable by the vented cowling face and fitted for rate of climb against the Gotha raids — the first Home Defence Pups had the 80 hp Le Rhône and were re-engined; at least one surviving airframe went the other way in 1918
- Propeller
- Two-blade fixed-pitch wood
- Gun synchronisation gear
- Sopwith-Kauper mechanical gear, designed in 1916 by Sopwith's foreman of works Harry Kauper. The Pup and the Triplane were the types it was standard on. Some very early Pups may have carried the Scarff-Dibovski gear; nothing is firmly recorded.
- Licence manufacture of the engine
- Daimler, W. H. Allen and F. W. Berwick in Britain, Union Switch & Signal in the United States, Thulinverken in Sweden as the Thulin A, and in Italy; more than 10,000 9C engines were built
- Shipboard equipment
- Skid undercarriage, flotation gear and a system of fore-and-aft deck wires to trap the aircraft on landing; later shipboard Pups reverted to wheels. The Beardmore W.B.III took the idea further with folding wings and, in the W.B.IIID, a jettisonable undercarriage.
Contested figures are hedged deliberately. Service ceiling in particular is quoted anywhere from about 15,000 ft to 17,500 ft depending on engine and source; production totals commonly given as ~1,770 (Sopwith, Standard Motor Co., Whitehead Aircraft and William Beardmore between them) also vary between references. Where sources disagree we have shown the common figure and flagged the range rather than pick a false precision.
Armament & payload
The Pup carried one gun, and that gun was aimed by pointing the whole aeroplane
A single belt-fed Vickers on the fuselage decking, synchronised by the Sopwith-Kauper gear, is the entire standard armament of a Sopwith Pup. By the spring of 1917 that was half of what an Albatros D.III carried, and the deficiency was real: a Pup pilot who got a firing position often could not convert it. What the Pup had instead was the ability to be in a firing position at all, at heights where the Albatros could barely manoeuvre. The armament story of the type is therefore mostly a story of things bolted on for specific jobs — a Lewis above the centre section, rockets on the interplane struts — none of which displaced the single Vickers. Almost every deviation from the standard fit was local, experimental or naval; the RFC Pup in France was a one-gun aeroplane from first to last.
Gun
- One .303 in (7.7 mm) Vickers Mk.I machine gun, belt-fed, water-cooling jacket drilled or left dry, mounted centrally on the fuselage decking immediately ahead of the cockpit and firing through the propeller disc.
- The gun was fixed. Aiming meant aiming the aeroplane, which is why an aircraft as light and responsive as the Pup was worth more than its firepower suggested.
- Rate of fire was cut by the synchronisation gear — every mechanical gear of the period slowed a Vickers substantially below its ground rate.
- A second Vickers was never fitted to a service Pup. The Sopwith answer to that problem was the Camel, which put two guns and a much heavier engine on a slightly smaller wing and gave up the Pup's manners in exchange.
Ammunition and sights
- A single belt of .303 in ammunition. Period tables for the Pup very rarely state the round count; figures around 500 are commonly repeated but are not well attested, and this page will not pretend otherwise.
- Sighting was by ring-and-bead, with an Aldis tubular telescopic sight fitted to many aircraft alongside or in place of it.
- Anti-airship work needed incendiary ammunition — Buckingham and Pomeroy rounds — because ordinary ball simply punched holes in a gasbag and let the hydrogen out slowly.
- There was no gun heating and no reflector sight. Above 15,000 ft in an open cockpit the practical limit on a Pup engagement was often the pilot and the gun freezing rather than the aeroplane.
Synchronisation gear
- Sopwith-Kauper gear, a mechanical cam-and-pushrod system designed in mid-1916 by Harry Kauper, Sopwith's Australian foreman of works and a friend of Harry Hawker.
- Its trick was to reverse the action of earlier gears: the firing impulse came from a low point on the cam so that the rod worked in tension rather than compression, letting it be lighter and faster.
- 2,750 Sopwith-Kauper gears were installed in service aircraft. It was the standard gear for the Pup and the Triplane and was fitted to many early Camels.
- It was not good enough for long. By November 1917 squadrons were reporting propellers shot through as the gears wore and "ran away", and the hydraulic Constantinesco-Colley gear replaced it as the British standard.
Overwing Lewis and anti-airship fits
- Some Pups, principally RNAS aircraft, carried a .303 in Lewis gun on the upper wing centre section firing over the propeller arc, either alongside the Vickers or in place of it.
- The attraction was that an overwing Lewis could be pulled down on its mounting and fired upwards into the belly of an airship or a two-seater. The drawback was drum changes, at altitude, in a slipstream, one-handed.
- This fit remained experimental and never became standard, which is worth stating plainly because photographs of it are common enough to mislead.
- Le Prieur rockets were carried by some aircraft: eight cardboard-and-black-powder rockets on wooden sticks, four per side, clipped to the interplane struts and fired electrically in a 45-degree dive. Effective range was about 115 m (125 yd) and accuracy was poor.
- The Shuttleworth Collection's aircraft flies in the markings of 9917, a Beardmore-built Pup that carried Le Prieur rockets aboard the seaplane carrier HMS Manxman.
Shipboard fit in place of stores
- Where a later fighter would carry ordnance, the naval Pup carried the equipment for getting on and off a ship: skid undercarriage, flotation bags in the fuselage, and hooks or horns to engage fore-and-aft deck wires.
- Pups operated from HMS Campania, Furious and Manxman, and from flying-off platforms built over the gun turrets of cruisers and capital ships.
- Squadron Commander Edwin Dunning landed a Pup on Furious under way on 2 August 1917, the first landing of an aeroplane on a moving ship. He was killed on 7 August on the third landing run of that programme, after a successful second landing the same day.
- Flight Commander Frederick Rutland flew a Pup off a turret platform on the light cruiser HMS Yarmouth on 28 June 1917, the first successful launch of its kind anywhere, and repeated it from B and Y turrets of the battlecruiser HMS Repulse on 1 and 8 October 1917.
- On 21 August 1917 Flight Sub-Lieutenant Bernard Smart flew a Pup from Yarmouth's platform and shot down the Zeppelin L 23 off the Danish coast — the single most consequential use of a Pup's one gun.
What the Pup did not carry
- No bombs. There was no standard bomb rack for the Pup and no bombing role: when the RFC wanted a Sopwith scout for ground attack it used the Camel, and paid heavily for it.
- No armour of any kind, no self-sealing tanks, and no parachute: British aeroplane crews were not issued parachutes at any point in the war, only balloon observers.
- No radio, no oxygen and no heating, in an aeroplane whose defining quality was performance above 15,000 ft. The pilot was the limiting component.
- No second gun and no camera. The Pup was never converted for reconnaissance; when it was finished as a fighter it became a trainer, an advanced and fighting-school machine and a senior officer's runabout.
Three typical loadouts
- Offensive patrol, No. 8 Squadron RNAS, the Somme, autumn 1916
- One Vickers with a single belt, ring-and-bead or Aldis sight, three hours of fuel, no bombs and no radio. On this fit 8 Naval claimed twenty German machines destroyed over the Somme by the end of 1916, against Fokker, Halberstadt and early Albatros biplanes that the Pup comfortably outflew.
- Home Defence sortie against Gotha bombers, Nos. 61 and 112 Squadrons, summer 1917
- 100 hp Gnome Monosoupape with the vented cowling for rate of climb, one Vickers loaded with a mixed belt including incendiary rounds, and a climb to intercept that took the better part of half an hour. Two squadrons were formed specifically for this work in July and August 1917 after the Gotha raids on London caused political damage out of all proportion to the tonnage dropped.
- Anti-Zeppelin flight from a cruiser turret platform, HMS Yarmouth, 21 August 1917
- One Vickers with incendiary ammunition, no undercarriage worth the name once the aircraft was committed, and no way back aboard: the pilot ditched alongside a ship and hoped. Bernard Smart flew this profile and destroyed the Zeppelin L 23. The aeroplane was written off, which was the accepted price.
Sourcing caveat: almost no period figure for the Pup carries a stated altitude, which is why the two speed rows in the table above disagree by six per cent and cannot be reconciled — 112 mph is Thetford's figure with no height attached, 106 mph is the commonly circulated alternative. Empty weight is given as both 787 lb and 856 lb by reputable sources and service ceiling as both 17,500 and 18,500 ft. Ammunition capacity is almost never stated in primary tables. The famous McCudden and Richthofen remarks about the Pup are repeated everywhere but are poorly sourced, and Wikipedia flags both as uncited; they are quoted here as reputation, not as evidence.
Variants
The Pup was one aeroplane with many jobs, and only the Navy really modified it
There is no mark series here. The Pup was built in one basic form by four firms, and the variation that matters is naval: skids instead of wheels, a bigger engine for Home Defence, and a licensee's wholesale redesign of the wing cellule so the thing would fold into a ship. Officially the aeroplane was the Sopwith Scout. The name Pup came from pilots, who thought it looked like the offspring of the two-seat 1½ Strutter, and the Admiralty disliked it as undignified — then lost the argument so completely that every later Sopwith except the Triplane got an animal name.
The most interesting derivative was not a Sopwith at all. Beardmore, building Pups under licence in Scotland, produced the W.B.III: same fuselage and engine, unstaggered folding wings, extra struts, flotation gear, and in one sub-variant an undercarriage the pilot could drop before ditching. It flew worse than a Pup in every measurable way and was still worth building, because a fighter that stows in a small space is a fighter a ship can actually carry.
That naval line is why the Pup matters beyond its own combat record. Deck landing had never been done on a ship under way, and the Pup was the only British aeroplane slow enough to try it: HMS Furious steaming at 26 knots into a 21-knot wind cut the closing speed over her forward deck to walking pace. On 2 August 1917 Squadron Commander Edwin Dunning flew past the bridge and funnel, side-slipped across onto the deck, cut the engine and let the aeroplane drop, where the handling party seized toggles on the wings and held it down. It was the first landing of an aeroplane on a moving ship. On 7 August he did it again successfully, then insisted on a third run before anyone else was allowed to try. Accounts of what went wrong differ — the ship's history says the engine choked, Dunning's own record says an updraught caught the port wing — but the Pup went over the starboard bow, and Dunning, knocked unconscious, drowned in the cockpit. He was 25.
The trials proved the principle and condemned the method in the same breath. Dunning's successor as head of Furious's air group, Frederick Rutland, made one landing in the same manner and then stopped the experiments, reporting to the Admiralty that a pilot doing this could expect to survive about ten landings, in good weather. The answer was not a better pilot but a different ship: a clear deck with nothing to fly around. Furious was given an after landing deck, and the Royal Navy went on to complete Argus with a flush deck from end to end. One correction belongs here, because two naval stories are habitually run together: the celebrated take-offs from towed lighters, culminating in Lieutenant Stuart Culley's destruction of the Zeppelin L 53 in August 1918, were flown from 2F.1 Camels and not from Pups. The Pup's share of the work was the deck landings and the gun-turret platforms, and that was quite enough.
- Sopwith Scout (1916–18 / 1,770)
- The official designation and the only production form. Single-bay biplane, 80 hp Le Rhône 9C, one synchronised Vickers. Everyone called it the Pup.
- Admiralty Type 9901 (1916)
- The Admiralty's own designation for the RNAS Pup, applied to the first aircraft ordered and delivered from August 1916.
- Sopwith 9901a (1917)
- Shipboard Pups with a skid undercarriage in place of wheels, arranged to engage fore-and-aft deck wires. Later shipboard aircraft reverted to a normal undercarriage.
- Home Defence Pup (1917)
- 100 hp Gnome Monosoupape in place of the 80 hp Le Rhône for a better rate of climb against the Gotha raids, identified by vents cut in the cowling face.
- Sub-contracted production (1917–18 / 1,700)
- Standard Motor Co. 850, Whitehead Aircraft 820, William Beardmore & Co. 30 — against only 96 from Sopwith itself, which was fully occupied building 1½ Strutters.
- Beardmore W.B.III, W.B.IIIF and W.B.IIID (1917–18 / 100)
- Beardmore's shipboard redesign: unstaggered folding wings with an extra inboard bay, flotation gear, folding undercarriage on the IIIF and a jettisonable one on the IIID. Armed with a single Lewis. Slower and lower-flying than the Pup, and superseded by the 2F.1 Ship's Camel.
- Sopwith Dove (1919 / 10)
- Two-seat civil conversion with a slightly swept upper wing, built for the post-war private market that did not materialise. One of them is the aeroplane that flies today as a Pup.
- Alcock Scout (1917 / 1)
- A one-off built at Mudros by John Alcock's unit from the wreckage of a Pup and parts of other aircraft. Later famous only by association with its instigator's Atlantic flight.
- Foreign service (1917–26)
- Belgium, Greece, Japan (Army and Navy), the Netherlands (interned aircraft), Imperial Russia and then the Soviet Air Force, the Australian Flying Corps and the RAAF at Point Cook, and the US Navy, which used Pups for turret-platform trials as late as 1926 aboard USS Idaho.
Survivors, stated precisely, because for a First World War type the distinction matters more than the count. Four original Pup airframes survive, all in Britain: N5182, a 1916 Sopwith-built aircraft flown operationally by the aces Edward Grange and Robert Little, static at the RAF Museum Cosford; N5195, static at the Museum of Army Flying, Middle Wallop; B1807, a Standard-built Home Defence machine recovered from a Dorset barn in 1973 and under long-term restoration to fly; and 3004/14, airworthy with the Shuttleworth Collection as G-EBKY. The last of those needs an asterisk: it left the works in 1919 as a two-seat Dove and was converted to Pup configuration in the 1930s, so it is an original Sopwith airframe but not an original Pup. Everything else that flies as a Sopwith Pup anywhere in the world — and there are a good number, in Britain, the United States and New Zealand — is a modern reproduction, some to original drawings and some with genuine Le Rhône 9C engines, but none of them 1917 aeroplanes. Out of 1,796 built, four.
The Sopwith Pup's timeline: from Kingston workshop to carrier deck
The prototype Sopwith Scout — soon universally the “Pup” — first flies. Herbert Smith's design is an immediate delight to test pilots.
The Pup enters front-line service with RNAS and RFC squadrons on the Western Front, quickly proving competitive against German fighters.
Naval and army Pup squadrons score heavily over the Somme and Flanders. German airmen, Richthofen among them, note the little scout's quality.
Newer Albatros D.III and D.V fighters outclass the Pup in speed and firepower; it begins to be withdrawn from the main front.
Sqn Cdr E. H. Dunning lands a Pup on the moving deck of HMS Furious — the first landing of an aircraft on a ship under way.
Dunning is killed attempting to repeat the feat when his engine chokes and the Pup goes over the side. The tragedy reshapes carrier design.
Pups serve on with Home Defence flights against Zeppelins and Gothas and, in large numbers, as much-loved trainers.
Withdrawn from service as the war ends. Only a handful pass to the civil register; a few reach Australia, the USA, Greece, the Netherlands and Russia.
Original and restored Pups survive in British museums, and airworthy examples and accurate replicas still fly at airshows such as Shuttleworth.
Sopwith Pup stories: the people, flights and moments behind the machine
A pup of the Strutter
The name caught on because the trim single-seater looked like the offspring of Sopwith's two-seat 1½ Strutter. The authorities reportedly thought it undignified. The pilots didn't care — and the name outlived everyone.
“Superior to ours”
Manfred von Richthofen is reported to have admitted, after tangling with a Pup, that he could see at once the enemy machine was better than his own in that fight — high praise from the war's most famous fighter pilot.
Land it on a tennis court
The great RFC ace James McCudden is remembered for saying that in manoeuvrability the Pup was the equal of any German machine, and that a practised pilot could almost put it down on a tennis court. It is the most quoted line about the type — and the most affectionate.
The naval scoring run
RNAS Pup squadrons on the Western Front ran up impressive scores through the winter of 1916–17, one unit claiming around twenty victories before the year's end — proof the light scout could fight as well as charm.
Dunning's landing
Squadron Commander Edwin Dunning side-slipped a Pup onto the forward deck of HMS Furious while she steamed into wind, deck crew grabbing toggles to haul it down. No aircraft had ever landed on a moving ship before.
The price of a first
Five days later Dunning tried again to prove the technique. His engine choked, the Pup was blown over the side, and he drowned before rescue. He was 25. His death changed how navies thought about landing aircraft at sea.
A fighter on every warship
Pups flew off short wooden platforms built over cruiser and battleship gun turrets, giving the fleet its own airborne defence against Zeppelins without a purpose-built carrier — ingenuity born of necessity.
Launched off the water's edge
Some naval Pups were flown off lighters towed at speed behind destroyers, a hair-raising technique that extended fighter cover far out over the North Sea.
Guarding Britain's night sky
As the Pup left the front, Home Defence flights used it against Zeppelins and Gotha bombers over England — though even with a 100 hp engine it struggled for the height and range to reliably catch the raiders.
The trainer everyone loved
Thousands of new pilots learned their trade on the Pup, whose forgiving manners made it the favourite of instructor and pupil alike. For many wartime aviators the Pup was simply the nicest aeroplane they ever flew.
An ace's first victories
The Australian ace Robert “Rick” Little flew a naval Pup in the winter of 1916–17 and scored some of his earliest victories on the type before going on to become one of the highest-scoring Australian pilots of the war.
Still flying a century on
A precious few original-era Pups survive in British museums, and airworthy examples and faithful replicas still delight crowds at Shuttleworth and other airshows — the gentle scout's charm undimmed.
Sopwith Pup photographs: period images and preserved aircraft
Click any image to enlarge. All photographs are public domain or Creative Commons; credits and licences are shown with each.
The Sopwith Pup in the air: a preserved scout flying today
There is no better way to understand why pilots loved the Pup than to watch one fly. This film follows the Shuttleworth Collection's Sopwith Pup — a century-old design still displaying with the light, graceful poise that made its reputation.
Video: “Sopwith Pup — The Shuttleworth Collection” by the High Flight channel on YouTube.
Where the Sopwith Pup flew: origin, fronts, naval pioneering and survivors
A British aircraft through and through, the Pup's world map is small but historic: designed and built in England, fought over the Western Front and defended British skies, pioneered flying from ships, and today survives in a handful of countries as museum pieces and airworthy replicas. Toggle the categories to explore.
The Sopwith Pup by the numbers: service, scores and standing
The Pup's “record” is best understood as a story of quality and timing rather than raw statistics: a genuinely superior fighter in late 1916, outclassed within a year by more powerful German machines, and immortalised less by its kill tally than by its handling and its pioneering role at sea.
Sopwith Pup: frequently asked questions
Can I fly in a Sopwith Pup?
Not as a passenger, and not with MiGFlug — the Sopwith Pup is a single-seat fighter with no room for a second person, and MiGFlug does not offer flights in one. Genuine original-era Pups live in museums, while a small number of airworthy examples and faithful replicas fly at airshows such as the Shuttleworth Collection in England, where you can watch one display. If what you want is the real feeling of flying a historic military aircraft yourself, you can do that today: MiGFlug arranges flights in genuine warbirds and jet fighters around the world. See migflug.com/flights-prices for what is currently available.
Why was it called the Pup if that wasn't its real name?
Its official name was the Sopwith Scout. Crews nicknamed it the “Pup” because it looked like a smaller offspring of the earlier two-seat Sopwith 1½ Strutter. The nickname was unofficial — reportedly even disliked by the authorities — but it stuck completely and started Sopwith's tradition of animal names.
Was the Sopwith Pup a good fighter?
Yes and no, and the honest answer is “for a while.” In late 1916 and early 1917 it was one of the best fighters over the Western Front, thanks to its superb manoeuvrability, good ceiling and beautiful handling. But it was always underpowered and lightly armed, and by mid-1917 newer German fighters like the Albatros D.III and D.V outclassed it in speed and firepower, so it was moved to Home Defence and training duties.
What happened with the Pup and HMS Furious?
On 2 August 1917, Squadron Commander Edwin Harris Dunning landed a Pup on the moving deck of the carrier HMS Furious — the first time an aircraft had ever been landed on a ship under way. Tragically, on 7 August he was killed attempting to repeat the feat when his engine choked and the aircraft went over the side. His pioneering work, and his death, directly shaped the development of the modern aircraft carrier.
How many Sopwith Pups were built?
Commonly cited as around 1,770 aircraft, built by Sopwith, the Standard Motor Company, Whitehead Aircraft and William Beardmore. The exact totals vary between sources, so the figure is best treated as approximate.
What engine and armament did it have?
Most Pups used an 80 hp Le Rhône rotary engine, though Clerget and Gnome rotaries were fitted to some batches and Home Defence machines used a 100 hp Gnome Monosoupape. Armament was a single synchronised .303 in Vickers machine gun firing through the propeller; a few aircraft experimented with an over-wing Lewis gun or Le Prieur anti-balloon rockets.
Are there any original Sopwith Pups left?
Yes, a small number. The Royal Air Force Museum holds a restored Pup (N5182, rebuilt with a majority of original or period components), the Fleet Air Arm Museum preserves one in naval markings, and the Shuttleworth Collection flies an airworthy example — itself an original-era airframe (a civil Sopwith Dove rebuilt to Pup configuration). Alongside these, several accurate airworthy replicas fly. Complete, untouched originals are extremely rare.
How fast was the Sopwith Pup?
Around 111 mph (about 180 km/h) at sea level for the standard 80 hp version — modest even in 1916. Speed was never the Pup's strength; its advantages were climb, ceiling and agility. Exact figures vary with engine and source.
Who designed and built the Sopwith Pup?
It was designed by Herbert Smith, chief draughtsman of the Sopwith Aviation Company at Kingston upon Thames, and first flew in early 1916. Production was shared between Sopwith and three sub-contractors — the Standard Motor Company, Whitehead Aircraft and William Beardmore — who between them built the great majority of the roughly 1,770 aircraft.
What was the Sopwith Pup made of?
Like most aircraft of its day, the Pup was a wire-braced wooden structure — spruce and ash — covered in doped fabric, with a fabric-covered plywood forward fuselage around the rotary engine. This light, simple construction is exactly what gave it such a low weight and such gentle handling, but it also makes surviving original airframes fragile and precious.
Where can I see a Sopwith Pup today?
In the United Kingdom, the Royal Air Force Museum and the Fleet Air Arm Museum both display preserved Pups, and the Shuttleworth Collection in Bedfordshire flies an airworthy example at its air displays. Reproductions can be seen at museums abroad, including The Museum of Flight in Seattle, and airworthy replicas — such as those built by The Vintage Aviator in New Zealand — appear at airshows. Always check a museum's website before travelling, as aircraft move and airworthy examples only fly in suitable conditions.
Fly a real fighter yourself
The Sopwith Pup belongs to the museums now. But the thrill it gave its pilots — a real military aircraft answering your hands — is something you can still have. MiGFlug arranges flights in genuine jet fighters and warbirds, from the L-39 jet to the mighty MiG-29 at the edge of space.
Explore more First World War fighters
Sopwith Pup: sources & further reading
- Royal Air Force MuseumCollection record and history for Sopwith Pup N5182 (G-APUP), including its restoration and service with the RNAS.
- Fleet Air Arm Museum (Royal Navy)Preserved Sopwith Pup and the RNAS story of early shipborne and carrier aviation.
- The Shuttleworth CollectionTechnical data and history of its airworthy Sopwith Pup (G-EBKY), including the Dove-to-Pup rebuild.
- Imperial War MuseumsPhotographs of the Pup in service and of Dunning's landing on HMS Furious, 2 August 1917.
- The Vintage Aviator LtdDetailed development and service history of the Sopwith Pup, and construction of airworthy reproductions.
- The Museum of Flight, SeattleSopwith Pup reproduction and interpretive history of the type.
- San Diego Air & Space Museum archivePeriod photographs of Sopwith Pups in wartime service.
- J. M. Bruce, British Aeroplanes 1914–1918 and Sopwith monographsStandard scholarly reference for Sopwith Pup design, variants and production figures.