Gloster Sparrowhawk

The Gloster Sparrowhawk was a single-seat fighter designed by Henry Folland of Gloster in the early 1920s and built for the Imperial Japanese Navy, which was creating a naval air arm with British help through the Sempill Mission. Folland based it on the Nieuport Nighthawk, replacing the unreliable ABC Dragonfly radial with the Bentley BR2 rotary engine and navalising the airframe. Stocks of stored Nighthawk parts let Gloster complete 50 aircraft within six months of the order, and a further 40 were assembled at the Yokosuka Naval Air Technical Arsenal. Versions included the Sparrowhawk I land fighter, the two-seat Sparrowhawk II trainer and the Sparrowhawk III shipboard fighter. It served in Japan from 1921 until 1928, first from ramps built over battleship gun turrets and later as a shore-based trainer. A civil Sparrowhawk II became the prototype Gloster Grouse.