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Sopwith Tabloid
The Sopwith Tabloid and Schneider were British biplanes, originally designed as sports aircraft and later adapted for military use. They were among the first types to be built by the Sopwith Aviation Company. The "Tabloid", so named because of its small size, caused a sensation when it made its first public appearance. A floatplane variant was prepared and entered for the 1914 Schneider Trophy race. Piloted by Howard Pixton this aircraft comfortably won the competition, the floatplane variant consequently becoming known as the Sopwith Schneider. Production orders for both types were placed by the military, and although the Tabloid saw only limited service in the early years of the war, some Schneiders were still in service at the end of the war in 1918.
==Design and development==
The original Tabloid, which was first flown by Harry Hawker on 27 November , was a two-seater single bay biplane with a side-by-side seating configuration, unusual at the time. The equal-span wings were slightly staggered and used wing warping for lateral control. The rectangular section fuselage was a conventional wire-braced wooden structure with the forward section covered in aluminium and the remainder, aft of the cockpit, covered in fabric. The control surfaces were of fabric-covered steel tubing and the undercarriage had a pair of forward-projecting skids in addition to the wheels. The most distinctive feature of the design was the engine cowling, which almost entirely enclosed the engine, cooling air being admitted through two small slots at the front. The prototype was powered by an 80 hp (60 kW) Gnome Lambda rotary engine and in a trial flown by Harry Hawker at Farnborough the Tabloid reached 92 mph (148 km/h) and took only one minute to reach 1200 ft (366 m) while carrying a passenger and enough fuel for 2½ hours. . A production order from the War Office was placed early in 1914, and a total of 40 were built.
The aircraft's speed made it an obvious candidate for entry to the Schneider Trophy competition, and accordingly a floatplane adaptation was prepared, to be powered by a 100 hp Gnome Monosoupape which T.O.M. Sopwith personally collected from Paris. This was initially fitted with a single central float, but on its first taxying trials with Howard Pixton at the controls the aircraft turned over as soon as the engine was run up, and remained in the water for some hours before it could be retrieved. A heroic effort was made to make the waterlogged machine airworthy, and, lacking the time to prepare a new set of floats, the existing float was simply sawn in half down the middle and thus converted into a pair of floats. After a satisfactory test flight on 7 April the aircraft was shipped to Monaco, where the competition was to take place. The competition, which was a time trial rather than a race, was easily won by Pixton. So clear was the superiority of the Sopwith that the competitors who were to start after him did not even bother to take off: Pixton had completed his first circuit in around two thirds of the time taken by the fastest of aircraft which had taken off before him. After completing the twenty eight circuits required at an average speed of 86.75 mph (139.6 km/h), he opened the throttle fully and completed two more laps at a speed of 92 mph (148 km/h), setting a new world record for seaplanes.〔Bruce ''Flight'' 8 November 1958, pp. 734–735.〕
The first order, for twelve aircraft, was placed in November 1914. Like the race winner, these were powered by the 100 hp Monosoupape and only differed in minor detail from the racer. Later production aircraft were fitted with ailerons in place of wing-warping, had an enlarged fin and were fitted with a Lewis gun firing upwards through an opening in the wing centre-section. In all 160 were built. No original Tabloids or Schneiders survive today but full size replicas of each are displayed at the RAF Museum Hendon and Brooklands Museum.
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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