Sopwith Rhino

The Sopwith 2B2 Rhino was a two-seat triplane bomber that the Sopwith Aviation Company designed and built as a private venture in 1917. It was a single-bay tractor triplane with ailerons on all three wings and a deep fuselage holding an internal bomb bay for 450 lb of bombs in a self-contained pack, which could be loaded separately and winched into the aircraft for quick re-arming. Defence was a synchronised Vickers gun for the pilot and a flexibly mounted Lewis gun for the observer. The design matched no official specification, so neither the Royal Flying Corps nor the Royal Naval Air Service ordered it, and Sopwith used a licence to build just two prototypes powered by a 230 hp Galloway Adriatic engine. It never entered production.