The Sopwith Camel was a British World War I single seat fighter aircraft. The Sopwith Camel was first built in 1916 by the Sopwith Aviation Company. Approximately 6,000 Sopwith Camels were produced. It featured a 150 h.p. Gnome 9 cylinder rotary engine, and it was armed with two Vickers .303 inch machine guns mounted in front of the cockpit, firing forward through the propeller disc. It was capable of reaching a speed of 115 mph. There was a fairing surrounding the gun installation which created a hump. It was this hump that led to the aircraft acquiring the name Camel.
The strong gyroscopic effect of the rotary engine resulted in strange handling, and the Sopwith Camel was notoriously difficult to fly in the hands of a novice (many were crashed due to mishandling on landing approach). The plane was intentionally built unstable so that to keep it flying straight the pilot had to compensate all the time. This made the plane more difficult to fly, but it also made it more agile. This agility in combat, though, made the Sopwith Camel one of the best remembered Allied aircraft of World War I.
