Sopwith Sparrow

The Sopwith Sparrow was a small British biplane built by the Sopwith Aviation Company during the First World War. It grew out of the Sopwith A.T., a radio-controlled aircraft whose cover name, Aerial Target, concealed experiments toward a flying bomb. Sources describe the Sparrow as an equal-span, single-bay biplane with a cockpit between the rear interplane struts, lateral control by wing-warping, and a cleanly cowled nose around a 35 hp ABC Gnat, a two-cylinder horizontally opposed engine. Its lineage ran back to the Sopwith SL.T.B.P., the development airframe of the Pup. The radio-control trials succeeded but never produced an operational flying bomb, so the design stayed undeveloped. The record is thin and accounts differ, and the name Sparrow is also used for a separate batch of small scouts drawn up for the 50 hp Gnome engine.