Sopwith

[Snautzer01]

 

[Wurger]

 

[Snautzer01]

Sopwith Bat Captured

 

[Wurger]

 

[Snautzer01]

 

[Gnomey]

Good shots!

 

[nuuumannn]

Nice; the top one is a Blackburn built Baby rather armed to the teeth. Beardmore built Pup N6454 aboard HMS Furious.

 

[Wurger]

 

[pbehn]

With planes named baby, bat and pup I wonder how Sopwith ever sold a single plane!

 

[Robert Porter]

I can just hear the German ground crew lamenting a loss, Yup, shot down by a baby he was. Or tried to run from the pup but he was caught.

 

[nuuumannn]

With planes named baby, bat and pup I wonder how Sopwith ever sold a single plane!

Sopwith got known as The Sopwith Zoo as a result of its aeroplane names! Only around for eight years and built 18,000 of some 100 different types, the Camel being the most numerous; the aeroplane that it was said, was "so famous the Arabs named a desert dwelling animal after it"!

 

[pbehn]

Sopwith got known as The Sopwith Zoo as a result of its aeroplane names! Only around for eight years and built 18,000 of some 100 different types, the Camel being the most numerous; the aeroplane that it was said, was "so famous the Arabs named a desert dwelling animal after it"!

Maybe it is a change in culture and expectation we now expect a piece of military machinery to have a war like name.

 

[nuuumannn]

Yeah, probably; the RAF stated its preference for nomenclature pretty much from the get go after April 1918 and manufacturers took notice rather than naming their machines whatever they wanted, although officialdom did like names that had the same first letter as the manufacturers, like Sopwith Snipe, or BAT Basilisk, or Vickers Valentia, etc. I think fighters were to have Birds of Prey names; I don't have a copy of the AP on standard nomenclature, but it allowed silly sounding names like Boulton Paul Bobolink, for example.

 

[Graeme]

Sopwith Bat Captured

Found this in an old magazine Snautzer - not as good as your image above but the caption explains this particular Bat Boat was sold to the Germans and flown to them in late May 1914 by Wilhelm Hillman and given the German Naval serial of 44....

 

[Graeme]

The British tried to destroy it later - note the bullet hole on far right.

 

[pbehn]

Found this in an old magazine Snautzer - not as good as your image above but the caption explains this particular Bat Boat was sold to the Germans and flown to them in late May 1914 by Wilhelm Hillman and given the German Naval serial of 44....

View attachment 474476

That isn't trade it is sabotage

 

[nuuumannn]

In a reciprocal situation, the Germans sold the British non rigid airships, specifically the Parseval type before the war, of which a licence was bought by Vickers to build them. I think Vickers built three, and the RNAS received one from the Germans.