The prize-winner from Brooklands

Thomas Sopwith was a rich young man with a habit of winning things. He made his first solo flight on 22 October 1910, gained Royal Aero Club certificate No. 31 a month later, and on 18 December 1910 flew 169 miles from England to the Continent to take the Baron de Forest Prize of £4,000. He was 22. A childhood tragedy shadowed him: at ten, a shooting accident on the Isle of Lismore had killed his father, an event that by his own account haunted him for life. In June 1912, with his mechanic Fred Sigrist, he set up shop at Brooklands, and the Sopwith Aviation Company was born.

A factory in a skating rink

That November Sopwith made his first sale to the military. In December the firm moved into its first proper factory: a recently closed roller-skating rink in Canbury Park Road, near Kingston railway station. From that unlikely shed came the Sopwith-Wright biplane, the Bat Boat flying boat with its laminated Consuta hull, and in November 1913 the Tabloid, flown by a young Australian mechanic named Harry Hawker. In April 1914 Howard Pixton flew a float-equipped Tabloid to win the Schneider Trophy at Monaco, lapping the only rival still running. British aviation had arrived. Six months later, two Tabloids bombed the Zeppelin shed at Düsseldorf and destroyed the airship Z IX inside it.

The flying zoo

War turned a workshop into an industry. Sopwith employed about 200 people in 1914 and some 6,000 by the Armistice, with dozens of subcontractors building its designs under licence. From 1916 the chief engineer was Herbert Smith, a Yorkshireman who had joined as a draughtsman in 1914, and his output had a menagerie flavour. The little single-seater that followed the 1½ Strutter was nicknamed the Pup by pilots who saw it as the Strutter’s offspring. The name was thought undignified and never official, but it stuck, and Sopwith leaned into it: Camel, Snipe, Dolphin, Cuckoo, Salamander. Historians call it the flying zoo.

The Camel

The Camel first flew on 22 December 1916 with Hawker at the controls. Smith had packed engine, guns, fuel and pilot into the front seven feet of the fuselage, and the rotary engine’s torque made it snap round to the right with frightening speed. Novices died learning it; experts found it the most agile fighter on the Western Front. Some 5,490 were built, and Camel pilots were credited with 1,294 enemy aircraft, more than any other Allied fighter of the war. Billy Barker scored 46 victories in a single Camel, B6313, the highest total attributed to one aircraft. Camels also flew off ships and lighters, and in August 1917 a Pup made the first landing on a moving ship, HMS Furious.

Hawker over the Atlantic

In May 1919 the Daily Mail’s £10,000 prize for the first transatlantic flight was still unclaimed, and Sopwith built a single aircraft, the Atlantic, to win it. On 18 May Hawker and navigator Kenneth Mackenzie Grieve took off from St John’s, Newfoundland. Hours out, the engine began to overheat, probably from a blocked filter. They ditched about 1,130 miles out beside the Danish steamer Mary, which had no radio. Britain mourned them for nearly a week before the ship reached Scotland and the news broke. They came home as heroes — a month later Alcock and Brown made the crossing.

Killed by its own profits

Peace was harder on Sopwith than war. Orders vanished, the company sank £100,000 into building ABC motorcycles under licence just as the motorcycle market slumped, and the government sent its bill for wartime excess profits. Of liabilities of £705,430, £583,510 was excess profits duty. On 16 September 1920 the company went into voluntary liquidation. Sopwith, Hawker, Sigrist and Bill Eyre formed a new company to buy the assets and named it after their test pilot: H. G. Hawker Engineering. Herbert Smith took several Sopwith engineers to Japan in 1921 to found Mitsubishi’s aircraft division. Sopwith himself lived to 101, still advising Hawker Siddeley until 1980.

Fábricas

• Brooklands · Weybridge, Surrey — Where the company was created in June 1912; flight testing
• Canbury Park Road works · Kingston upon Thames, Surrey — Former roller-skating rink near Kingston station, opened December 1912

Pessoas

• Sir Thomas Sopwith · founder — 1888–1989; knighted 1953; America’s Cup challenger with Endeavour, 1934
• Fred Sigrist · mechanic, works manager, co-founder — Later co-founded Hawker
• Harry Hawker · test pilot — Flew the Tabloid, Triplane, Camel and Dolphin on their first flights
• Herbert Smith · chief engineer — Designed the Pup, Triplane, Camel and Snipe; to Mitsubishi in 1921
• Howard Pixton · pilot — Won the 1914 Schneider Trophy in a Tabloid

Recordes e pioneirismos

• Schneider Trophy, Monaco, April 1914, Tabloid flown by Howard Pixton
• First landing of an aircraft on a moving ship, Pup, HMS Furious, 2 August 1917
• Highest victory total for a single aircraft in the war: 46, Camel B6313, Billy Barker
• First British aircraft to enter service with a synchronised machine gun, 1½ Strutter
• Baron de Forest Prize for the longest flight from England to the Continent, 169 miles, Thomas Sopwith, 1910