sopwith camel kill/loss ratio

On Mon, 20 Oct 2003 08:56:33 -0400, Stephen Harding
wrote:

Russell Waterson wrote:

There is a book called "Winged Victory" first pubished in 1934 by a Camel
pilot by V. M. Yeates tells about flying them in battle in 1918. The camel
was not fast and could not catch anything in a tail chase. The Germans found
that hit and run tactics were the only way to take them on and have any
success. They were fine against Dr1 because they were in the same boat, slow
but manouverable. the camels were used more at mid to low altitude while
SE5a and Dolphines went performed better higher. He writes that sometimes
he would be jelous of them because they were fast er and higher and so were
more able to catch the enemy better but in a Camel he could get out of
trouble easier. The Germans did not want to dogfight Camels because of the
obvious that in a dogfight Camels were better then what the Germans had at
the time

I always thought the Sopwith Camel was pretty fast; 130 mph or so, as well as
maneuverable. It's generally considered the best Allied fighter of WWI
(I think), although Spad and SE5a have their adherents.

As a somewhat related question...

PBS recently had a Nova show on "Who Killed the Red Baron?". It mentioned
that he is generally portrayed as having been shot down by a Lt Brown of
the RCAF (RFC??), but the bullet that did him in was noted to have passed
from *below* him, and up and across (from the side) through his chest,
making it questionable that he was actually killed by Brown, in a Sopwith
Camel attacking from behind and above.

It mentioned a couple sets of ground gunners, British and Australian, who
were actively shooting at him too.

Unfortunately, I dozed off for the final 10 minutes of the show and never
heard the "new information" that has apparently been unearthed about the
shooting down of von Richthofen.

Can anyone who saw the show tell me what the final conclusions were? Does
Brown keep the credit, or is someone on the ground now considered the
destroyer of the Red Baron?


SMH

IIRC the "new" information was a computer simulation, which left them
with the conclusion that they could not reach a conclusion. We still
do not (and probably never will) know for sure. Personally I think the
ground pounder with a "silver bullet" probably made the shot.

Al Minyard

Stephen Harding writes:

Russell Waterson wrote:

There is a book called "Winged Victory" first pubished in 1934 by a Camel
pilot by V. M. Yeates tells about flying them in battle in 1918. The camel
was not fast and could not catch anything in a tail chase. The Germans found
that hit and run tactics were the only way to take them on and have any
success. They were fine against Dr1 because they were in the same boat, slow
but manouverable. the camels were used more at mid to low altitude while
SE5a and Dolphines went performed better higher. [...]

I always thought the Sopwith Camel was pretty fast; 130 mph or so, as well as
maneuverable. It's generally considered the best Allied fighter of WWI
(I think), although Spad and SE5a have their adherents.

I'll try to look up some numbers tonight (JM Bruce _War Planes of the
First World War_ or the Profile series may cover this), but my memory
of various references matches the comments from "Winged Victory". The
numbers I have in memory for Camels are around 120 mph at sea level,
the SE5a was around 130 to 135 mph at sea level. The Camel
performance was supposed to fall off more rapidly with height. I
recall comments which seemed to be more specifically `Clerget Camels'
suggesting that this may not hold for the BR1 engined Camels (or less
so). It is probably true that variations in engine output and
reliability was greater in WW1 than in WW2 due to lower metallurgical
and other quality control, which would further complicate matters. It
is recorded that in December 1917 the British had around 400 SE5a
airframes awaiting engines, the quality of many of the supplied
engines not being acceptable.

In 1918 the two Australian squadrons (AFC squadron #2 with SE5a and #4
with Camels if I recall correctly, don't remember the RFC/RAF numbers)
were operated together with the SE5a's used for top cover and the
Camels for low level. When the Camels were replaced with Snipes this
tended to be reversed, suggesting that Snipes had a better altitude
performance.

--
Stephen Harker
School of Physics & Materials Engineering
Monash University http://www.ph.adfa.edu.au/s-harker/
Baloney Baffles brains: Eric Frank Russell

Don't forget who had parachutes and who didn't!

-- Charlie Springer

BTW, Eddie Rickenbacher's uniform and letters were sold at auction this week.

-- Charlie Springer