Development – Key Publishing

Development

Sopwith’s 1916 design pioneered the triplane fighter By the summer of 1915, Allied aircrew reports from war-torn France were noting a new enemy fighting aircraft fitted with a revolutionary weapon: a fixed machine gun firing forward through its propeller arc. With this armament the Fokker E.III ‘Eindecker’ enjoyed a notorious period of success: the so-called ‘Fokker scourge’. Similarly-equipped Allied types gradually appeared, including the Sopwith Aviation Company’s Pup single-seater, which entered service in the autumn of 1916. By then another