Sopwith Camel

The Sopwith Camel is a British single-seat biplane fighter designed by Herbert Smith and built by the Sopwith Aviation Company, entering Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force service in June 1917. Powered by a rotary engine and armed with twin synchronized 0.303 inch Vickers machine guns housed under a distinctive hump-shaped fairing that gave the aircraft its name, the Camel concentrated roughly 90 percent of its weight in its front two meters, making it extremely maneuverable but demanding to fly. Camel pilots were credited with downing 1,294 enemy aircraft, more than any other Allied fighter of the First World War, out of approximately 5,490 built, and the type continued in limited service through the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War before its withdrawal from RAF service in January 1920.