Armstrong Whitworth Armadillo

The Armstrong Whitworth Armadillo was a British single-seat biplane fighter of 1918, designed by Fred Murphy, who had become Armstrong Whitworth's chief designer, as a private venture powered by a Bentley BR2 rotary engine. It met the requirements of Air Board Specification A1(a) for a replacement for the Sopwith Camel, but it was built mainly to test the abilities of the company's new design team and was not seen as a serious competitor. A licence for two prototypes was granted in January 1918. The Armadillo was a two-bay biplane with a square-section fuselage and a circular engine cowl topped by a deep hump that housed two synchronised Vickers machine guns. The first prototype flew in April 1918. The pilot's poor view was criticised, the faster Sopwith Snipe was already in large-scale production, and the type was abandoned with the second prototype left unfinished.