A Buyer's Guide To Collector Aircraft: Snoopy's Famous Sopwith
June 3, 2002
Al Letcher recalls how he felt when he first saw B6291. “It took my breath away,” says Letcher, who owns the vintage airplane. “It was so genuine it even smelled the part.”; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc(); "B6291")
The plane, a Sopwith Camel, was designed in Kingston-upon-Thames in England by the Sopwith Aviation Co. and first flew in December 1916. Pilots soon discovered that like a real camel, the nimble fighter could turn and bite you. The aircraft weighed only 929 pounds, but most of its weight was concentrated in the front seven feet of the fuselage, giving the Camel its distinctive hump. The weight, combined with the plane’s powerful rotary engine, created torque during takeoff and sudden maneuvers. During World War I, 413 Camel pilots died in combat, and 385 died from non-combat related incidents with the plane. (Click image to enlarge)
While dangerous in the hands of a novice, the Camel was agile and lethal in the hands of a seasoned pilot. The plane entered service in mid-1917, the final year of the war, and was credited with 1,294 kills, more victories than any other Allied fighter. The Camel was also the first single-seat fighter to fly against German night bombers, the first to be used as a dive-bomber, and the first airplane to be successfully launched from a dirigible in flight.
In August 1918, a Camel flown by Lt. S.D. Culley grounded the German super Zeppelin L-53. And Canadian Capt. A. Roy Brown of No. 209 Squadron RAF is said to have shot down Manfred von Richthofen on April 21, 1918.
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