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The Sopwith Aviation Company
was a British aircraft company that designed and manufactured
aeroplanes mainly for the British Royal Naval Air Service, the
Royal Flying Corps and later the Royal Air Force during the First
World War, most famously the Sopwith Camel. Sopwith aircraft
were also used in varying numbers by the French, Belgian and
American air services during the war. The Sopwith Aviation Company
(based at Brooklands) was created in June 1912 by Thomas Octave
Murdoch (Tommy, later Sir Thomas) Sopwith, a wealthy sportsman
interested in aviation, yachting and motor-racing, when he was
24 years old. Following their first military aircraft sale in
November 1912, Sopwith moved to the company's first factory premises
which opened that December in a recently closed roller skating
rink in Canbury Park Road near Kingston Railway Station in South
West London.[1][2] An early collaboration with the S. E. Saunders
boatyard of East Cowes on the Isle of Wight, in 1913, produced
the Sopwith "Bat Boat", an early flying boat with a
Consuta laminated hull which could operate on sea or land.[3]
A small factory subsequently opened in Woolston, Hampshire in
1914.[3]
In April 1919, the company was
renamed as the Sopwith Aviation & Engineering Company Limited.
In September 1920, the company entered voluntary liquidation
after an attempt to build motorcycles failed. The patents and
other assets were bought by a new company, H.G. Hawker Engineering. |
