Inspired by Robin's One Wing Biplanes:
http://beyondthesprues.com/Forum/index.php?topic=9060.30Restored to Glory - The Sopwith Hound 'One-Wing Biplane' is Being RebornThe last surviving Sopwith
Hound is now being restored back to airworthy condition. If the restoration remains on schedule, the reborn aircraft will resume its flying career after a hiatus of almost exactly one hundred years. For those who are unfamiliar with the type, the Sopwith
Hound was an intermediate type between the better-known [/i]Pup[/i] and
Camel biplane fighters.
Like all production
Hounds, D4198 was built by Whitehead Aircraft Ltd at their Richmond, Surrey works. [1] A late production aircraft, D4198 went first to No. 3 (Naval) Squadron RNAS based near Dunkirk. In July 1917, No. 3 began receiving new Sopwith
Camel biplanes and the
Hounds were withdrawn. Surplus to naval requirements, most of the RNAS
Hounds were transferred to the Royal Flying Corps for training purposes - many being converted into dual-control two-seaters.
The fortunes of
Hound D4198 were different. In a sense, she maintained her naval heritage. Assigned to No. 112 (Home Defence) Squadron, RFC, at Throwley in Kent. Although No. 112 was part of the London Air Defence Area forced intended for intercepting German heavy bombers, the
Hounds also routinely engaged German seaplanes operating off the coast. After the Armistice, many
Hounds were sold off to civilian interests. Most were converted into two-seat tourers, a fate D4198 avoided.
Top Sopwith
Hound D4198 as it appeared as a civilian-operated aircraft in 1921. Note the new plating on the forward upper decking and faired turn-over pylon. New fabric covering has eliminated the service tail stripes but the roundel is retained (it seems that D4198 never had a civil 'G' aircraft registration applied).
The civilian career of D4198 was fairly brief. At the 1922 Aerial Derby over Hendon, the
Hound 'turned turtle' on landing. Pilot, Lester Forestier-Walker, was unharmed - thanks to a recently installed turn-over pylon - but the
Hound was considered a write-off. The remains of D4198 were collected and stored on her owner's property in Dorset. Post-crash plans to rebuild the airframe never came to fruition and the
Hound's components were left disassembled in the dry loft of that Dorset barn for almost 90 years. In 2009, the remains of D4198 were sold to a warbird collector for daunting task of restoration.
The first order of business was cataloguing all of the preserved components and assessing their conditions. The original 80 hp Le Rhône 9C rotary engine had long since disappeared and a replacement was needed. The wooden components had mostly survived but the wing panels - having been stored in the rafters - had suffered most from the years. The fuselage and tailplane was judged restorable but new wings were required. With a substantial amount of work needed, progress on the
Hound restoration has been slow.
By 2016, a restored Le Rhône 9C rotary engine [2] had been received back from Skysport Engineering and a set of restored cowling metal and a period propeller have been sourced to replace missing items. A replica Vickers aircraft gun has also been procured - the plan being to restore D4198 in its full wartime glory. Meanwhile, work is underway on a set of replacement wing panels is underway in a hangar at Tarrant Rushton. [3] As many original wing fittings as practical are being refurbished for installation on the new wing panels. It is expected that D4198 restoration work will be fully complete by 2022. Then, we will witness the first airworthy Sopwith
Hound to fly for a century.
Bottom The still-incomplete Sopwith
Hound D4198 restoration rolled out of its hangar at Tarrant Rushton in the Summer of 2019. Note the 'dummy' machine gun (connected to period Scarff-Dybovsky synchronization gear) and reconditioned replacement front-end sheet metal. The 'new' cowling (thought to come from a [/i]Pup[/i]) has had reinforcing strips added to it at some point.
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[1] Having already license-built over 700 Sopwith
Pups, Whitehead Aircraft was a natural choice to produce the Sopwith
Hound.
[2] This rotary is actually a derated Le Rhône 9Ja - one of 953 built by W.H. Allen Son & Co. of Bedford - which originally powered an RAF Avro 504K biplane trainer.
[3] The hangars at newly re-opened Tarrant Rushton airfield were occupied by Flight Refuelling until that firm's move to Hurn in the late 1970s.