Nick and the Sopwith Camel

I heard that Karen’s cousin, Nick, was building an airplane. Not just an airplane, a Sopwith Camel – one of the first and most successful fighting aircraft in history. I wanted to see it so I invited myself.

The email conversation went something like this:

“Hi Nick. I wonder if it is okay if I come to Maine to see your project.”

“That’d be great. Come anytime.”

“I have a friend who might also be interested, is it okay if he comes along?”

“My hangar is Liberty Hall. All are welcome. You can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard. Not really sure what it means but I like how it sounds so I like saying it.”

Spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard? Apparently the phrase is a literary reference that goes back to the late 1700’s but that is another story.

My friend Jim and I head to Maine.

We arrive at the Wiscasset airport, a one-runway landing strip just up the coast from Brunswick. The runway itself is a little longer than might be warranted for the small planes that fly in and out of Wiscasset, but once in a while larger aircraft come to visit and use up all of its nearly 3,400 feet of paved surface. It is an uncontrolled airport, and there is no tower to direct incoming or outgoing planes. Pilots communicate their location, direction, and intentions on a radio channel specific to Wiscasset. They are on their own to obey airport rules and avoid collisions. This is the standard at many of Maine’s small airports.

Standing in Nick’s hangar I hear a radio come to life. In a low, rapid-fire monotone, almost bored, a pilot announces “Wiscasset Unicom Cessna eight niner one oh one on five mile downwind for runway two five.” After another minute or two, the same pilot: “Wiscasset Unicom Cessna eight niner one oh one downwind for two five.” And then a minute later the faint chirp of tires on pavement and low drone of a Cessna four-seater landing and coasting down the runway.

The hangar provides neat and orderly storage and workspace for Nick’s two planes, the partially complete Camel on one side and a small bright yellow single-engine acrobatic plane, which Nick also built and flies regularly, on the other.

The hangar is also part museum of family aviation history with a collection of memorabilia and stories of Maine flying. There is a small photographic tribute to Nick’s great-aunt Nancy Love, an aviatrix who, among other things, flew aircraft of all sizes supporting the effort during World War II. There is a copy of the New York Times, page one, from September 16, 1935, announcing the plane crash that killed his great uncle Lincoln Chadbourne Denton. “Bill,” as he was known, was a Navy pilot and accomplished sculptor when he crashed in the fog.

There is a broken propeller mounted on the wall, complete with deer hair stuck in grains of wood. Apparently, a friend of Nick’s was landing on a grass runway as a deer crossed. Deer and aircraft seldom mix, and beneath the propeller is a photo of a damaged plane with an adult doe cut cleanly into two pieces, its hind quarters here and its front legs, shoulders and head over there.

The hangar is also is part man cave, complete with a kegerator stocked with local home-brew, a well-worn couch, a skeleton named Mr. Skinny with Heineken bottle-cap eyes, and an electric guitar connected to a good-sized amplifier. “We had a drum set in here last week,” Nick tells us while showing us around.

But the dominant presence in the hangar is the Sopwith Camel. The plane, which is under construction and currently consists of an engine mounted to the structure of the fuselage, occupies one side of the hangar. Detailed plans, laid out on a large wooden table, occupy another space nearby. Surrounding the plane and plans are tools neatly spread across benches, parts in various stages of assembly, a welding unit, and a roller tool used to form and bend sheets of aluminum to create the plane’s outer shell, its wings, the cowling around the engine, and countless other rounded surfaces that make up the plane’s skin. There are containers of pop rivets that will secure the aluminum, screws, nuts, and bolts of all sizes. There are the machine guns to be mounted directly in front of where the pilot sits. This is, after all, an aircraft used in war.

To those outside the aviation world, the Sopwith Camel might be a mystery. If you are of a certain age you may know it as the plane that Snoopy, Charlie Brown’s beagle, flew in his imaginary dogfights against the Red Baron in the Peanuts comic strip. The Sopwith Camel was, in fact, a single-seat warplane developed by the Sopwith Aviation Company, and used extensively by the British in the First World War less than twenty years after the Wright brothers flew their Wright Flyer at Kittyhawk. The Camel was powered by a single rotary engine and had twin Vickers machine guns synchronized to fire through the propeller.

The Camel was not an easy plane to fly. The engine, pilot, machine gun, and fuel tank all sat in the front seven feet of the aircraft, making it very nose-heavy. In addition, the early rotary engines were designed so that the cylinders rotated with the propeller. All that spinning mass created a huge gyroscope that led the plane to constantly pull to the right. Inexperienced pilots found the Camel extremely challenging to fly. In modern engines, like the one Nick is using, the cylinders remain stationary and only the propeller rotates. Hopefully Nick’s Camel will be much easier to fly.

During the war, versions of the Camel were flown off ships in early iterations of aircraft carriers. They were use to provide ground support for troops in the trenches and were used to down German bombers. There were even attempts to hang the Camels from the bellies of large balloon-type airships so that they could be released in the event that the airship was attacked. But the Camel is probably most famously known for its aerial dogfights that typically occurred at relatively low altitude. The Camel is credited with downing over 1,000 aircraft in the First World War.

We walk around the fuselage asking question after question for which Nick has all the answers and a few stories to go with.

“Is this the same type of engine in the original Sopwith Camel?”

“No, it is about the same size and a similar type – a nine cylinder radial, instead of rotary – but much more stable and easier to fly.” Nick shows us the computer-controlled timing mechanism.

“When are you going to attach the wings?”

“Funny story about the wings. There are four, of course, because it is a biplane, and I cut one of the wings an inch short. I called the guy who designed this plane and asked him what to do. He said, ‘I’m going to hang up and pretend you didn’t even call. Put the wing on, the plane will fly just fine’. I decided to order material for a new wing just to be careful.”

“Do you order the parts and assemble the plane or do you have to fabricate the parts?”

“We’re working off these plans, which are schematic at best. We have to figure out the exact dimensions and fabricate the pieces of the plane and we make some mistakes.” He points to a box of aluminum and steel cast-offs, “wind chimes” Nick says, “that’s what those pieces are good for.”

I ask Nick how many hours he thinks he has put into the project. “You know, I think that is sort of like trying to calculate what your hourly rate is when you work on an annual salary. The number only gets you depressed. But when it’s finished I know what it’s going to look like.” Nick opens a book showing Jim and me a picture of a Sopwith Camel replica in dark grey with white stripes and the red, white and blue circular insignia of the British Air Force – it is a beautiful plane. “And I know what I am going to name it, Pure Luck.” We ask when he thinks he will have it done and he replies, “ I haven’t set a completion date. I don’t want to rush the process. I want to do it right and when it’s done it’s done.”

That’s good enough for me, Nick, but please let me know when Pure Luck is finished because I want to see it fly.

(Nick is Ted/Karen/Steve's first cousin (maternal))