Today in Technology History
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January 27
The creator of the famed "Sopwith Camel," one of the most important airplanes of World War I, died exactly fourteen years ago.
Thomas Octave Murdoch Sopwith was born into a wealthy British family in 1888. Although he was the family's first son, he was the eighth child -- hence the middle name "Octave." After his father's death in a hunting accident, young Sopwith received a small inheritance which he used to start a motor business when he turned seventeen; it grew into a profitable Rolls Royce dealership.
Sopwith caught what he called the "flying bug" in 1910, after his first ride in an airplane. He bought a plane of his own, took some lessons, and received the 31st flying certificate issued in Britain. He spent a couple of years participating in air competitions and tours, then started a flying school. (One of his students was Major Hugh Trenchard, the father of the Royal Air Force.) Sopwith began to build his own planes, and he founded an airplane company with ten employees.
But with the onset of World War I, demand for Sopwith's planes grew dramatically and his company came to employ thousands. The most famous of his planes was the "Camel," which got its name from the slight hump near the front, where the guns were mounted. The Sopwith Camels were by far the most successful Allied fighter planes, used to shoot down more than 3,000 enemy aircraft during the war. By 1918, Sopwith's company had built more than 18,000 planes.
Sopwith came to the rescue again during World War II; his company actually started producing new fighter planes even before the war began, and months before he received a government contract.
He was knighted in 1953. Sir Thomas retired in 1963, but continued to enjoy his lifelong hobbies of hunting, traveling, yachting -- and of course flying. He died on January 27, 1989, at the age of 101.
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