With Greg still enjoying his leave in Holyhead, North Wales, back on the Western Front the business of war continued. This is a good opportunity to look at an aircraft of which Greg had a photograph: the Sopwith Dolphin.
Sopwith Dolphin
Although this photograph is in Greg’s collection, there’s no indication of either when or where it was taken. Judging by the tents in the background, it was clearly somewhere in the field. And the photo has the look of having been taken by a Vest Pocket Kodak camera. So it’s likely that Greg took it himself while on active service on the Lys sector.
19 Squadron RFC/RAF was the first to be equipped with Dolphins, beginning in late 1917. At the time, the squadron was based near Lille. If they were still in the same area in the closing months of the war they would have been almost neighbours of 42 Squadron. Just possibly, then, this is a Dolphin of 19 Squadron that Greg photographed on a visit (either by him or by the aircraft). Unfortunately the serial number, which would help to pin down its provenance, isn’t visible in the photo.
The Sopwith Dolphin was “the world’s first single seat multi-gun fighter”, according to the RAF Museum, which houses a reconstructed example. It was designed for high altitude combat. An unusual feature was the split upper wing mounted at the level of the top of the fuselage. This afforded good aerial visibility, but at the price of a clear view of the ground. The Dolphin’s engine was a powerful but somewhat unreliable 200 HP, geared, in-line Hispano-Suiza, marking Sopwith’s move away from the rotary engine that had powered the Camel.
Further Reading
An informative account of the Sopwith Dolphin is on the Warbird Tails website here:
Warbird Tails