For the Sopwith Camel, training fatalities (380) were almost equal to combat fatalities (420)
On December 22, 1916, the Camel—the most famous of the Sopwith fighters—made its debut. It was renowned for its sharp right turn and two Vickers machine guns that fired quickly and simultaneously into the propeller. According to Mark C. Wilkins in his book, British Fighter Aircraft in World War I, grouping all the weight on the CofG up front (guns, pilot, fuel, engine) combined with the gyroscopic effect of the rotary, enabled the Camel to make a very hard and fast right turn—which could also result in a spin rather quickly if the pilot wasn’t paying attention (this could also be useful in combat by the experienced pilot).
The Camel’s nose climbed when you turned left and dove when you turned right, just like the French Nieuports. The following is what future RAF Marshal Arthur Harris had to say: “If you wanted to go into a left turn you put on the full right rudder, and if you let go of the stick it looped!”
The Camel was a powerful weapon in the proper hands, yet it was harsh to unskilled or uninitiated users. Combat deaths (420) and training deaths (380) were nearly equal, making it crucial to complete training as soon and effectively as possible. This led to the insight that these fatalities may be much decreased if trainees could possibly learn the Camel with an accomplished instructor on the same aircraft.
Lt. Col. L. A. Strange, a member of the Central Flying School, wrote in Recollections of an Airman: “In spite of the care we took, Camels continually spun down out of control when flown by pupils on their solos. At length, with the assistance of Lt. Morgan, who managed our workshops, I took the main tank out of several Camels and replaced [them] with a smaller one, which enabled us to fit in [a] dual control.”
The guns were taken out, the oil and fuel tanks were combined into one, made smaller, and moved to a new location directly behind the firewall to provide for the weight of a second person. Training flights often lasted less than 30 minutes, thus a greater capacity tank was not required.
A smooth transition from a rich mixture, required for takeoff, to a progressively leaner mixture with higher altitude was the fatal flaw with inexperienced Camel pilots. Too frequently, a new pilot would fail to lean out the mixture at the proper moment, causing the engine to stall at a low altitude, which generally led to a serious or deadly crash. All the major flight schools received The “Training Camel,” as it became known, and it dramatically reduced training accidents.
American fighter pilot Elliott White Springs, who flew Camels with the 148th Aero Squadron, said the following of them:
“A tricky little biplane … they would do about 90 mph level but you couldn’t fly level because they would shake your teeth out in forty seconds by the clock. You had to climb or glide. But they could fly upside down and turn inside a stairwell. They would stall at 15,000 feet and lose 1,000 feet in a turn. But they were deadly below 5,000 feet if you could suck the Fokkers down to that level.
“… We picked up the castoff rebuilt Camels from Aire. No new Camels had been built since January [1918] when they became obsolete and were replaced by SEs, Dolphins, Bentleys, and Snipes. But that summer they were still the workhorses below 15,000 feet. Camel … [was at a] disadvantage … where speed and height were paramount, but in a dogfight down low nothing could get away from it … a Camel could make a monkey out of an SE or a Fokker at treetop level but it couldn’t zoom and it couldn’t dive. The Dolphin was worthless because the motors were too unreliable and the Bentleys [engines] and Snipes didn’t get to the front until too late.”
British Fighter Aircraft in World War I is published by Casemate Publishing and is available to order here.
Photo by Airwolfhound from Hertfordshire, UK via Wikipedia and U.S. DoD