Sopwith triplane

Why was the sopwith triplane superseded by the sopwith camel when on paper it looks just as good
if no just little better

[Barrett]

I'd guess the Camel replaced the Triplane because it was (a) faster and (B) better armed. Remember that the Camel was the first two-gun fighter the Brits fielded, and that was only in the summer of 1917, a year or more behind the Germans.

[stephen]

Mel Alexander once had the chance to fly a twin Vickers-equipped Tripe and told me that it was decidely more sluggish... i.e., it has lost much of it's maneuverbility advantage over the Albatros. It also inhibited the rate of climb, so it's safe to say from Mel's experience that developing the Tripe into a two gun plane was not a good option.

That left the option of increasing horsepower to compensate, but the airframe of the Tripe was so light and fragile that this wasn't such a good idea, either. According to both Mel (Naval 10) and Edward Desbarats (Naval 1), it was light on the controls and none too strong, and keeping the Tripe's weight down was the key to it's success in combat. There wasn't much development room left, so along came the Camel. And if you look at the Camel's progression from the 130 hp Clerget to the 150 hp Bentley, you find the same result... the airframe couldn't handle much more power, so a new airplane was in order. Presto, the 230 hp Snipe.

[stephen]

Desbarats claimed that the Tripe only had a firm upper hand on the Alb when fighting at 10k feet or higher... perhaps he was biased since he was shot down by three of them while on a contact patrol. Took one of them head-on while another came up from behind and shot out his instrument panel and controls. Dumped on his head in a shell hole. Woke up later covered with mud in a German trench. He swore to his dying day that he must have gotten the Alb he attacked frontally... had it dead in his sights.

Talked to a chap who flew both the Tripehound and the Camel, Henry Botterell, a few days ago when visiting him in Canada. He said the Tripe climbed like a lift but getting down was a problem, you couldn't dive it like you could the Camel. Then he chuckled, looked thoughful and again recalled how well the Tripe climbed. His memory was unfortunately somewhat clouded, in more ways than one. Henry Botterell is today 102 years old

Re the Camel being the first twin gun British fighter: The SE 5 was operational a couple months before the Camel and it was equiped with two fixed forward firing guns as standard equipment (Lewis and Vickers). The Camel was merely the first British machine to use two synchronized guns as standard equipment (two Vickers). (I know you guys have been around long enough that you already knew that, but judging from some of the more recent inquiries on this forum, there would seem to be a lot of nuggets out there who wouldn't know that. Just cleaning up a minor detail.)

thnaks it has always buged me why the tripe was superseaded by the camel

It probably bugged a lot of jasta pilots too.

Regards,

MDD

J.M.Bruce in the Profile publication give the disproportionate amount of work required to repair even minor battle damage plus problems in maintaining enough aircraft at the front as a result of the relatively small numbers built, less than 150.

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