Sopwith Admiralty Type 807

The Sopwith Admiralty Type 807 was a British biplane seaplane designed and built for the Admiralty by the Sopwith Aviation Company. It developed from the two-bay tractor biplane that Sopwith built in July 1914 for the Daily Mail Circuit of Britain race for seaplanes, powered by a 100 hp Gnome Monosoupape rotary engine, which the Royal Naval Air Service bought when war broke out. The Type 807 had a longer upper wing braced with kingposts and wings that folded on the Short Brothers patented mechanism, twin strut-mounted floats and two tandem open cockpits, and it was sometimes called the Sopwith Folder. Twelve were ordered, and three flew from HMS Ark Royal to the Dardanelles in February 1915 as reconnaissance aircraft, where they proved underpowered with fragile floats.