Vickers E.S.1

The Vickers E.S.1 was an early British fighter of the First World War, a single-seat biplane of which only three were built, although at least one served with a Royal Flying Corps home defence squadron. In late 1914 Harold Barnwell, chief test pilot of Vickers Limited, designed a fast single-seat scout and had it built without the knowledge of his employers, borrowing a Gnome Monosoupape rotary engine from the company stores. His Barnwell Bullet crashed and was wrecked in an attempted first flight in early 1915, possibly through a miscalculated centre of gravity. The E.S.1 that followed first flew in August 1915 and proved extremely fast, Vickers claiming 118 mph, and able to gain height on a loop. After operational trials in France it received a modified cowling to drain fuel away from the engine and a forward-firing Vickers machine gun with the Vickers-Challenger synchroniser. Two further aircraft were built with 110 hp Clerget or Le Rhone engines.