Westland Wagtail

The Westland Wagtail was a prototype British fighter of the First World War, a small single bay tractor biplane designed at Yeovil in 1917 by a team led by Robert Bruce and Arthur Davenport to meet Royal Air Force Specification IA for a light fighter better than the Sopwith Camel. Like its rivals, the BAT Bantam and the Sopwith Snail, it used the 170 hp ABC Wasp radial engine. It was built of wood and fabric, with a large cut-out in the upper wing centre section to improve the pilot view, and carried two Vickers machine guns over the nose. Six prototypes were ordered in February 1918, though the last two were cancelled, and the first to fly did so in April 1918. Handling was good, but the Wasp proved unreliable and was abandoned in October 1918, so the Wagtail was never adopted; two more were built in 1920 as testbeds for the Armstrong Siddeley Lynx.