Sopwith Baby

Sopwith Baby


description
It was the next evolutionary stage following the Sopwith Schneider. The design remained essentially the same. A single-seat biplane with a cockpit under the upper wing, with wings of the same span and a canvas-covered wooden airframe. The landing gear consisted of two large main floats and one small float at the rear of the aircraft. A change was to equip the aircraft with a nine-cylinder Clerget rotary engine of 110 or 130 hp, which drove a two-bladed wooden propeller with a diameter of 2.6 metres. Furthermore, the engine cowling was modified and given the characteristic inverted-U (horseshoe) shape. All four wings were fitted with flaps. The armament consisted, as on the Schneider, of a Lewis machine gun mounted in a cut-out in the upper wing, firing upwards and forwards; on later models, the mounting of the machine gun was changed - a synchronized Vickers 7.7 mm (0.303 in) machine gun now fired forwards through the propeller circuit. The Sopwith Baby could carry two 65lb bombs used in anti-submarine patrols.


It was deployed on light cruisers, seaplane carriers and other types of ships (e.g. HMS Vindex, HMS Engadine, HMS Campania). Use on submarines was also considered. Sopwithy Babies were also deployed at coastal air bases in England. The main task was to stop Zeppelins bombing Britain. For this task they initially used Ranken Darts - incendiary darts designed to pierce the airship's hull and explode inside the gas bag. They also operated in the Mediterranean either from land bases (Thasos, Otranto, Imbros) or from ships (HMS Ark Royal, HMS Ben-My-Chree). For example, in January 1918, aircraft from the Ark Royal attacked and bombed the Turkish cruiser Yavuz Sultan Selim (originally SMS Goeben) near the Dardanelles. However, the bombs used were too small to cause serious damage to the ship. From 1916, Sopwith Baby aircraft also operated in Dunfermline.


The Sopwith Baby was produced not only by the Sopwith Aviation Company but also by other manufacturers - Blackburn Aeroplane Company, Fairey Aviation Company and Parnall and Sons. It was common for each manufacturer to produce an aircraft with a slightly different design and equipment. The Blackburn Aeroplane Company produced aircraft essentially the same as the original from the Sopwith factory. The Fairey Aviation Company produced aircraft with arched wingtips with flaps, altered rudder and improved floats. Parnall and Sons produced machines identical to Sopwith but with arched wingtips like Fairey. Sopwith Baby machines were also licensed by the SA Aeronautica Gio Ansaldo factory in Turin, Italy.
Aircraft produced by Fairey and Parnall and Sons are also referred to as Hamble Babies due to their design differences.


Number of units produced:
100 pieces - Sopwith Aviation Company
186 - Blackburn Aeroplane Company
130 pcs - Fairey Aviation Company
50 units - Parnall and Sons


Sopwith Baby aircraft were used by the air forces of Canada, Australia (including HMAS Brisbane), USA, France (designated Sopwith 130 ch Clerget), Chile, Greece and Norway.


Sopwith Baby operations in Norway
In the summer of 1917, Great Britain was annoyed by Norwegian Naval Air Force (Marinens Flyvevesen (MF)) officers H. Riiser-Larsen and F.A. Horgen. The aim of their trip was to obtain modern aircraft for the MF. The negotiations were successful and so in 1917 the Norwegian Naval Air Force ordered ten Sopwith Baby machines.
The first four arrived in 1917, the remaining six were delivered a year later. They were designated F.100 - F.118 (the Navy used only even numbers, the Army Air Force only odd numbers) and were equipped with a 130 hp engine. Norwegian Sopwiths took off from bases in Horten, Haugesund and Kristiansand.
In 1923, the F.104 was to cooperate in a polar expedition in which Roald Amundsen wanted to fly over the North Pole in a Junkers F-13. The expedition failed and so the aircraft only made a few flights to Svalbard. In 1928, Sopwiths Baby numbers F.100 and F.102 aboard the heavy cruiser KNM Tordenskjold were sent to Svalbard to help find Amundsen and his companions who had disappeared while searching for Umberto Nobile's airship Italia. As is well known, they were unsuccessful.
There were also trials in Norway with the substitution of floats for a conventional chassis fitted with wheels, and experimentation with a ski chassis. All tests were successful.
The last Sopwith Baby ended its service in December 1931. In total, these aircraft flew over 1,500 hours in Norway. They had a number of crashes, only one of which resulted in the death of the pilot, and by the end of their service life, thanks to many repairs and modifications, they were quite different from the original machines.



[1] COOKSLEY, Peter. Sopwith Fighters in Action: Aircraft nrumber 110. Squadron/Signal Publications, Inc. 1991 ISBN 0-89747-256-X
[2] www.britishaircraft.co.uk
[3] Ellingsen, Øyvind. Sopwith Babys in Norway

On the differences between Schneiders and Babies - the usually reported claim about Clerget engines is not entirely true, as a small number (the first five and the last 31 of the first stocus series) of Babies also received Gnomes in the original convex hood (the Italian-built machines then had Le Rhone engines). The second difference is the rounded edge of the keel, but some of the first Babas did not have it yet and conversely some of the last Scheiders did. The main difference is the wings. Schneiders were controlled by wing twisting, whereas all Babies had wings fitted with ailerons. However, since some of the Schneiders received ailerons afterwards, it is possible to distinguish some of the last Schneiders and the first Babies just by serial numbers. Babies made by Sopwith had numbers:
8118-8217,
Blackburn:
N300
N1010-N1039
N1060-N1069
N1100-N1129
N1410-N1449
N2060-N2134


source:
Davis, Mick. Sopwith Aircraft, Crowood Press, Ramsbury 1999. ISBN 1-86126-217-5.
Bruce, J. M. Sopwith Baby, Windsock Datafile 60. Albatros Productions, Berkhamsted 1996. ISBN 0-948418-79-0.

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Fotka převzata z www.earlyaviator.com. Je na ní dobře vidět tvar krytu motoru, který je jedním z hlavních viditelných rozdílů mezi typy Schneider a Baby.

This picture shows a nice example of another type of Sopwith offensive armament - the unguided powder rocket Le Prieur. Due to the method of launch - rods on grips mounted on the interwing struts - they were not very accurate, but when firing a salvo or aiming more carefully they were a troublesome opponent for observation balloons and larger aircraft. The machine pictured has several rockets already fired on one side. The location on the wing struts quite far from the fuselage was to reduce the risk of the machine itself catching fire after a missile launch.


Source: avia.russian.ee

Synchronizovaný Lewis ... Zvláštní ...

Pro synchronizaci Lewisu se používal mechanický synchronizátor Hazelton (Hazelton device). O tom, že synchronizace byla pomocí zařízení Hazelton mluví monografie Windsock, o mechanickém synchronizátoru obecně víc zdrojů, např. King, Armament of British Aircraft 1909-1939.

Ostatně stejný stroj je na výřezu z fotky zde, oba Lewisy jasně viditelné.

Neobvyklé řešení to bylo, ale zpočátku (než se více osvědčil Vickers) se s ním také experimentovalo, je například známo, že u Verdunu létal na Nieuportu 11 se synchronizovaným Lewisem Jean Navarre.