Hawker Woodcock

The Hawker Woodcock was a British single-seat biplane fighter, the first fighter produced by the Hawker Engineering Company, which grew out of Sopwith Aviation. It was designed in 1922 as a night fighter to Air Ministry specification 25/22. The prototype first flew in March 1923 with an Armstrong Siddeley Jaguar II engine, but it proved hard to manoeuvre, suffered wing flutter and was redesigned by George Carter with a single-bay wing and a Bristol Jupiter IV radial engine. This Woodcock Mk II flew in August 1923 and entered Royal Air Force service in 1925 with Nos. 3 and 17 Squadrons, after early wing spar and undercarriage failures were cured. Sixty-two were ordered in total, armed with two synchronised Vickers machine guns, and the Gloster Gamecock replaced it from 1928. The type also led to the Danish Hawker Danecock.