Sopwith Salamander

The Sopwith Salamander, officially the TF.2, was a single-seat biplane built by the Sopwith Aviation Company in 1918 for low-level ground attack. It grew out of the Snipe fighter but carried a heavy box of armour plate around the pilot and fuel tank so that it could survive the rifle and machine-gun fire that had been shooting down unarmoured Camels and DH.5s over the trenches. The prototype began flying from Brooklands in April 1918 and a very large order followed, but armour plate distortion and a shortage of Bentley BR2 rotary engines slowed deliveries, and the war ended with only a handful of aircraft in France. At least 497 were completed after the Armistice, and the type was used in camouflage trials and kept in service in Egypt into the early 1920s.