Sopwith Camel Rotary Engine Rock 'n' Roll
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 มิ.ย. 2011
- Get four FREE full length documentaries from Historical Machines TV by logging in with your TH-cam account using the link below. This Video: A short video showing a Gnome rotary powered Sopwith Camel starting and then idling, which highlights the effect that the torque of the rotary engine has on the aircraft.
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vidCamel - ยานยนต์และพาหนะ
The entire engine spins around a fixed crank, crazy design.
The engine was lubricated with castor oil, which can be absorbed through the skin with the same effect as ingesting it. Much respect to the pilots.
These were the first radial engines, due to the manner in which the cylinders are mounted radially on the crankcase. The earliest radial engines were of the rotary type. The design was first developed to be an integral part of the wheels of early motorcycles. Usually a small five cylinder radial engine mounted in the wheel with the crankshaft serving as the axle and the cylinders and crankcase rotating with the wheel. No clutch or gears, the engine stopped whenever the bike stopped, and that was a difficult aspect. The German Megola is an example, with the "motorwheel" in the front. The need for gearing and the necessity to stop and restart the whole machine every time the rider had to stop for traffic caused this design to become obsolete in motorcycles by the early 1920s.
However, these rotary radial engines in early motorcycles proved themselves to be light and powerful, and, since the cylinders were always spinning in the air, they did not have cooling troubles experienced by other designs. These factors quickly led to the development of larger versions to be installed on early aircraft, where their use is best known.
Flying 130 mph at 10,000 feet with no heat, oxygen, or parachute in machines that were much newer than home computers are now and had an engine that sounds like a modern grass mower. And somewhere out there, perhaps hiding in the sun, are the Fokkers with the red-themed paint scheme. The bravery of the WWI airmen, all of them, astounds me.
brachio1000 the bravery was mainly confined to the Airmen of the Royal Flying Corps and their opponents in the German Air Force. Then maybe one...or two of the Americans who turned up three years late as they would again in December 1941. The Bravery of the American fighting man is exactly the same as any fighting man anywhere. The cowardice was of the United States Government, who, during both World Wars, sat there on the fence, selling arms to both sides.
Yeah it must of taken guts and balls of steel to dogfight in those fokkers lol
brachio1000 ь
@
Stewart Nicol as BILLY CONNOLLY
And had ya'll gotten off yer asses and assisted the Confederacy back in 1861, perhaps ya'll would have been better off...?
I think the Allies would've won without us, but maybe not until the early '20's some time and with many millions more casualties. The Von Schlieffen Plan was in trouble within 3 months after is was implemented.
Finest rotary engine demo I have ever seen and I am 70 years old.
I can only imagine an airfield in France with a dozen of those rotaries starting up at the same time back in 1917. The sound.
...the aesthetics, the style, the nostalgia....
The absolute courage of *manning* such new and uncertain technology! To combat and champion their beliefs on *both* sides of the conflict! It's amazing that these planes even got off the ground because these men had *BALLS* !
@@Pynaegan balls the size of cantaloupes.
Hats off to the pioneering aviators!
@@pramuribwan5209 k9
@@Pynaegan Many of them had less than a 50% chance of surviving for 21 days.
An airfield in France. The sound and the stench of castor oil.
There will never be another fighter like the Camel. Short coupled, stabilizer a little small, and with huge gyroscope up front. In a spin it could turn three times completely while losing only a hundred feet. It could almost do a 180 by thinking. If a enemy was on your tail you could almost reverse directly back at him.
In the hands of an expert it was an untouchable fighter.
In the hands of a beginner it was a death trap, it would stall and spin before you could think, though recovery was gentle if you could get past the shock of whirling like a top.
The Gnome “single valve” was one of the best engine of the era and for its day very reliable. It did however have a few quirks, it pumped castor oil fumes into the cockpit at low speeds, which could make the pilot sick. This was because there was no exhaust manifold, exhaust just spewed out under the cowling to go wherever, and noxious stinking castor oil was the lubricant of choice. The engine had no throttle. Instead power was controlled by a series of switches called Manettes, that would hold open the valve on individual cylinders, cutting out compression. Later models used a switch that ground out the spark plugs on 3, 6, or all 9 cylinders, cutting power on and off by that much, but if careless pilot didn’t also reduce or cut off the fuel flow, or cycle through the cylinders, the spark plugs could oil up from the unburned fuel oil mix and become unable to spark until manually cleaned. The system was controlled by a button on the stick that would cut ignition on and off when pressed and released like a gun trigger. This method was called “blipping” by English pilots, presumably from the sound. I don’t know what term the French used to refer to the practice. The Gnome was also used in the Nueport 28, and (I kid you not) by the Germans built at the Obersel plant under license from the French. (🤦🏻♂️)
When I was in elementary school I was obsessed with WW1 fighters and read everything there was to read about the camel, including interviews conducted in the 50’s of surviving Camel pilots (one of whom also flew spits.)
I would give a lot to fly a Camel.
One of the best comments I've ever read on TH-cam. Highly informative.
😮😅😂😊
You’d most certainly give you life
@@Dude0020 maybe, but that’s not the point is it.
Thank you for this!
Snoopy was right choosing a Sopwith Camel for his aircraft. Love the sound of them.
LOL
Biggles also flew one of these.
@@nigeldepledge3790 I was going to say that!
Should have been a Sopwith Pup.
I was wondering how far I would have to read down the comments to see a Snoopy reference!
I've read that the effect of this torque in the air made the Sopwith one of the hardest planes to master but it also enabled pilots to make a shockingly sharp turn that could give the best of them a huge advantage against other pursuit planes.
+satidog It's complex. The rotating weight of the engine did create big gyroscopic effects. Combined with the fact that on the Camel, everything heavy was packed into a sort of 'bath tub' at the front of the plane... They were not an easy or intuitive plane to fly. People who were good pilots (and good learners) could extract real benefits from the odd effects. Most could not. The most obvious effect was the Camel turned very quickly and abruptly to the right, and hardly at all to the left... The Camel was the single most effective allied fighter, in terms of how many it shot down. But that is partly because there were a lot of Camels in service, and because you learned quite a bit about flying quite quickly or it killed you, and makes no mention that Camels killed more people (by about 2:1) than any other WW1 aeroplane, as a result of accidents and crashes and mishaps. It was tricky to get things right in a Camel - it was very easy to get them wrong.
@ Kneedragon1962.
Apparently Snoopy wasn't very good at that.
th-cam.com/video/pTTDHHkQSFY/w-d-xo.html
@@Pynaegan "Curse you, Red Baron!"
@@Kneedragon1962 I was going to say, if you got behind a Camel you could be pretty sure it was going to turn to the right.
The Camel was a pain in the ass to fly due to the engine torque, but in hands of the right pilots, they gave every other fighter a run for their money.
World war 1 aviators and aircraft always amaze me. Those people were literally writing the books on flying and aerial combat as they fought a war.
And without parachutes ...
Dicta Boelcke. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dicta_Boelcke
@@alfnoakes392 they had them, not everyone used them. Not as reliable them like today.
@@kennyj4366 The Germans started to use the parachute in 1917. The British were forbidden to use them because the High Command thought that many pilots would jump instead of facing the enemy!
Just reading a flight manual from 1918 signed by the pilot using it. Frank Horton. Wonderful to read. Scary how new it all was then. Can't find any info on him. Shame.
The rate of development during the 20th century still amazes me. My father lived from before the first powered flight until after the first moon landing, and I started work in a large company that had no computers and retired from a company that had more computers than people.
As my Grandmother did, it is amazing how humans can, when they put their minds to it, create and explore; it’s sad that every invention can and has been used for destruction or so it seems.
It seems that politicians view the greatest new inventions only for their destructive and killing capabilities☹️
What a time to live, incredible time, machinery, strife, life and death. Nothing like today. What an era.
a pilots life expectancy was only 3 weeks. My grandad was in the trenches from Feb 1915 to July 1916. He was lucky to survive and nearly didn't. He spent two years in hospitals. Two of my grandmothers brothers were killed as was my grandad's brother. Living in peace is a better option. My grandad always said they should make the politicians go in the forward trenches and make them fight so it would be over quickly. He hardly ever talked about it but after he died we saw in his personal effects the records showing what he had been through.
“Those magnificent men and their flying machines”
i got to see a plane with a rotary engine when i was a kid around 1960 and it sputtered alot and almost cutting out as it ran and then flew. i don't remember if it was a sopwith camel or maybe some kind of nieuport. it left a lasting memory with me and i have a photo somewhere of myself standing next to it wearing a leather helmet with goggles and trying to look like eddie rickenbacker. i was about 10 years old and had built models of a lot of the world war one planes.
I personally find it nice to just listen to the sound of a unique engine from time to time. Rotaries aren't that common, and it's nice to take in the sound of an era long since passed. But that's how I feel.
Visited Wairapa in 2019 while they were practising - the Camel was like hearing nine BSA Gold Stars revving up in unison. Amazing sound.
Most of today's young "Pilots" don't even know there were two types of "Radial" engines back then.
"Static" radials we know about from their success in WW2, and these Rotating radials of WW1.
Where the entire engine ROTATED with the prop!. This was done for two reasons.
COOLING, to have plenty of air flowing over the cylinders. And for better distribution of the oil inside the engine.
I've never flown a "Rotary". But, when I was first learning to fly as a kid back in the 60's, I meet plenty of old timers that had lots of experience with them!
Back when it took huge balls to be a pilot! Love it.
In that conflict, it also took massive cojones to be an infantryman.
@@nigeldepledge3790 Or really be just about anybody. WWI was not a particularly great time to be alive for many people.
And these days someone piloting a camber you think it’s any less difficult???
@@Rob-vv5yn Yes I think it was much more difficult when aviation was in it's infancy it was experimental technology, learning by fatal mistakes, pilots had no pressurized heated cabins or parachutes, and they were taking them into war. So, yes, the pilots flying then were much more prepared and likely to die than any modern pilot. What makes you think it wasn't more difficult?
@@martiantexan7632 it really depends on the aircraft I can fly a glider and you can learn in a few hours but to learn to safety fly in all conditions that becomes a 100 hours. To fly a twin light plane it becomes even more complex and goes on and on each higher performance aircraft. However this camel in the video is a high performance ww1 fighter it’s just as hard to fly as it was over a hundred years a go and no the pilot doesn’t wear a parachute or have any modern instruments. So it is just as difficult to fly as she was back then to fly and just as dangerous.
An important piece of our past that deserves saving. Thanks for the huge job of keeping this aircraft airworthy.
I think those Sopwith Camels were the best flyers during ww1. That bird is beautiful, sounds like the the correct engine in it.
The original engines didn't have a throttle. Full on or off. This one idles occasionally, so it is updated to some degree. When they came in to land you would hear the engine cut out, then come on over and over, as the pilot tried to slow down.
@@onusgumboot5565 your wrong this is an original engine BTW I’ve seen it fly plenty of times and spoken with the then pilot and engineer. It is of course rebuilt and they now make exact copies of this engine for sale to people with money to put in their WW1 fighters.
Aww the torque of the old Gnome Rotary.Heard it was hell to fly.
Whenever I play a flight sim or a combat flight sim they're always missing the raw sound of the engine and the difference in tone between on throttle, off throttle and I've never seen a flight sim that shows cool stuff like the exhausts firing when the engines slowing down. Little touches but they'd be cool, awesome video!
Louise Charlesworth flight Sims are mostly about the controls it seems. Have you tried DCS or ArmA 3 yet?
My grandfather was a pilot and flew during the last of ww1. He told me that the engines torque was so heavy that he could make 270 deg turns using the engine - trying to pull a 90 against the torque meant you were flying steady for too long to nòt get killed. As HE said - any farmer can fly.
Well, when the crankshaft is attached to the airframe and the cylinders rotate around the stationary crankshaft, I'm surprised he didn't have the wingtips kissing the ground
That's one thing that killed a lot of beginners.
Thank you very much for this video. To clarify it's not the torque of the produced by the engine causing the wings to rock. It's the reaction to the inertia of the engine's rotating mass when the RPM changes.
You are correct
You can see where the maneuverability came from, and why the Sopwith camel was the highest scoring fighter of the first world war. However, they were bears to fly until you got use to them so i have read. Quite a high percentage of new pilots didn't get it right to their cost.
A blip switch cuts the ignition to some of the cylinders in the motor. Camels and their rotary engines did not have a throttle in the sense of controlling the fuel flow to the engine since the did not have carburetors, when a rotary engine is on; it is full throttle. The only way to control the power that the engine was outputting was to temporarily cut the ignition mechanism in some of the cylinders in the engine to assist with maneuvering.
Hope that helped, fact check me if I am wrong.
The Clerget engine used in most Camels was available with a throttled carburetor that was at least marginally effective.
Due to the massive amount of torque the rotary engine put out, the plane would actually climb when turning to the left, and descend when turning to the right. Pilots had to compensate for both when flying the Camel. Also the torque generated meant this plane struggled in left turns at full power. But if you wanted to turn right, it would whip itself around faster than a rattlesnake on crack
I remember building a model of this plane when I was 8 or 9 years old. It came out well.
_"Don't come a-knockin' when the Sopwith is a-rockin'."_
😜😜😜
It's amazing that these planes got off the ground at all with the *balls of brass* the pilots sported!
That engine was a wonder of its age, though sadly obsolete nowadays. Still beautiful to see it running.
I got to fly a Spearman in Utah many years ago. The pilot told me to watch what would happen if it went slower than 60 mph. It basically fell out of the sky!! Then he said it was mine....fly it. One the highlights of my life.
That thing is timed perfectly also
Seems to be that New Zealand is the current place to see, hear smell all those rare WW1 planes. Thank you HAFUVideo for sharing.
I was of the impression that it wasn't so much the torque, but the placement of the engine. It made the Camel fly more like a gyroscope. It also made it unstable. These issues were corrected in the Sopwith Snipe.
These rotary engines gave the Sopwith, the DR1 Triplane and others, a really wicked right turn that could not be matched by in-line engine aircraft of the time!
it looks like the force of the engine is being applied to the plane's left though, which would mean the rotary force would be applied while turning left, and would counteract a right turn
@@andrewroberts7428It does appear that way, but if you research the issue, you will find out about the right hand turn.
My great uncle was said to have flown these in the Great War. Sadly he passed before I ever heard of his experience.
My WWI favorite, also the SE5As and the SPADs.
Take off, man!
I saw early footage of an original starting up during WW1, and it twisted and shook a lot more than that, the whole fusilage was moving like a skipping rope.
That spudder at 0:55 sounded amazing! They must be one heck of a memorable flight!
Old Rhinebeck aerodrome has an Avro 504, Camel, and Fokker D 8 with rotary engines. Their DR 1 has a regular radial engine.
Probably a Warner Scarab in the Dreidecker Einz. Lots of WWI replicas use Warner engines due to their similar size to the originals.
It was a scary time. Not only for pilots of ww1 but also the ground troops on both sides. Hard to rap your mind around the death toll in that war. Especially in just one battle alone the death toll was astronomical. Rich man's war fought by poor young men.
It's a good thing, that the rich man's war, fought by the poor, is a thing of the past!
Workers killing workers. I would have liked to have seen them unite & turn on the wealthy bastards who started & continued it for way too long.
@@sparky6086 NOT!
Check out our other Sopwith Camel videos then. :-)
Biggles pulls his goggles down, Do you want to be a hero starts playing. Perfection.
The reason that engine has so much precession (P factor) - instead of a crankshaft that turns, the whole cylinder bank rotates and the crankshaft is fixed to the airframe. In essence, the entire engine was rotating, so one hell of a gyroscope.
I guess that was to keep it cool.
It is cool, crazy but cool.
That sounds amazing. I love those old engines.
Yes, this is the same Camel that lost its cowling during a display flight in 2001. Check out our other videos to find a clip of that incident.
The rotary engine had so much torque to the right… it made turning left difficult. Pilot accounts say it was faster to turn 270 degrees right, instead of trying to get the plane to turn 90 degrees left.
When the plane's a rockin don't come a knockin!
All the old rotaries were like that. No throttle, just an interrupter switch. ON/OFF Pure beast!
I have heard restored WW1 a/c fly at the Old Rhinebeck Museum and restoration centre in New York State, USA, several times. You never rid yourself of the doubt of whether the pilot blipped the interrupter switch, or the darn thing stalled. Having several in the air at the same time is a unique feast of sight and sound, especially in their daily demonstration dogfighting. Remarkable.
What a beautiful flying machine!
The US had the little 'Jennys' at Call Field in Wichita Falls, Texas. I have been told more pilots died in training accidents than in combat. Until about 2019, there was a flying Jenny in W Falls. Now, it is on permanent static display at the municipal airport. I loved seeing it fly. The museum group auctioned off a ride in the final flight, fetching $35,000.
I can imagine the torque effect that rotating engine had on that very light air frame. It's little wonder they had so many takeoff and landing accidents.
The rotary right dive, left climb gave rise to the popular reason for the starboard islands of aircraft carriers.
All of these comments, about whether or not this engine is a radial or rotary or a mix of both, have missed one basic fact. In a standard engine (radial included) the pistons, con rods etc. move up and down in the cylinder by changing direction of travel many times a second. This puts huge amounts of strain on things and limits maximum engine speed.
In a rotary engine like the Gnome, the pistons move in and out of the cylinders because they are spinning on a different central axis than the cylinders.....because on one side the piston's central axis is closer to the cylinders than the other side it causes the in out motion without the pistons ever changing direction. This design puts far less strain on the pistons and con rods, but does put centrifugal force on the cylinders. It also makes the aircraft hard to handle as centrifugal force doesn't like changes in direction and will react in a 90 degree direction when change of direction is applied....ie the aircraft will climb when turned to the left and dive when turned to the right.
Thanks for that; I think other people, like me, find this confusing because normally “rotary” refers to a Wankel engine, not the design in this Camel.
Rotary engine does not have pistons !
@@petercousins1645 You mean a Wankel engine doesn't have pistons. Rotary engines like the Gnome do...Google it.
Can you imagine the men who flew these probably never drove a car might not have ever gone farther then the next town suddenly are flying 130 mph at 10k feet high.
That’s one ANGRY radial, I love the torque twist to the air frame..
It is cool, isn't it? However its not a radial engine, it's a rotary engine (the whole engine spins about the crankshaft), which is what is producing all the torque.
Reminds me of my 1982 Volvo 240DL
My old Oster Commercial Bar Mixer sounded just like that. It didn't fly, but you were flying after a couple pitchers of margaritas!
Many of the planes with either the Gnome or Oberusel rotary engines had oversized ailerons on one side to help counter the torque. The main method of engine speed control was to short out the magneto since these engines didn't have a real or controllable carburetor. Good pilots made the engine's torque work for them in combat, left turns being faster than right turns.
Not a rotary engine, it's a radial engine
@@petercousins1645
It is a radial, but designed to rotate around it's crankshaft. These were also known as rotaries- not to be confused with Wankel engines. Wankels should more properly be known as "rotor engines" due to their rotors.
In just a few short years after the Wright brothers first flight they built this plane and men FOUGHT with it!
Imagine the tune, and then. "There ain't nothin' like a Gnome!" Definitely music!
I can imagine, that is isn't easy, flying such an aircraft. The rotating mass is enormous, isn't it?
+turbocompound That big hunk of rotating metal is pretty impressive, yes.
+turbocompound In WWI this aircraft was known for weeding out lesser-skilled pilots in accidents
Think about this... The many forces acting on a tail dragger during takeoff. You have the torque of the prop (and motor in the case of a rotary) twisting the aircraft left. Then you have the rotary turbulence of the prop wash hitting the vertical stabilizer pushing it to the right, turning the aircraft left. Then during rotation pulling the tail up to level you have gyroscopic forces of the prop and motor (like spinning a bike wheel really fast and then trying to turn it) which is also trying to turn the aircraft, left of course, since gyroscopic forces work 90° past the input force. Crazy. Nice video BTW.
fantastické co naší předkové dokazali vyrobit bez počítačů a mderních cnc soustruhů
Snoopy knew what was up!
This is very cool. I am enthralled by the actual tone of the engine-- sounds almost wimpy, except that knowing it's over twice the power of a Piper Cub sitting in a lightweight all-wood frame keeps things in perspective.
I remember reading of these. Rigged so tail heavy it would"zoom and stall" if you weren't always pushing forward. And experienced boys would often control throttle via the mixture. So often the engine might choke and quit just after take off. By starting lean you knew which way to turn the mixture when she she started to miss. Everyone's nightmare, no altitude, no runway, no airspeed
Amazing plane! Would love to be able to go for a ride in one of these.
Nice camera work with that shot of the porta-potty.
That's a beauty man.
I could only imagine the p factor on this beauty
Fantastic
If I was around then and of age I would make every one of those engines a throttle butterfly like in a auto carburetor or throttle body. Flippin the ignition to fire on a couple cylinders for an idle sounds aggravating and can't be good on those engines. But they made it work. They flew great and did what they had to do.
Rotary engines are, by default, radial, i.e. the cylinders radiate from the crankshaft. When rotaries were common, up to the 1920s, people spoke of rotaries and stationary radials to distinguish between the two types. The word 'stationary' has lapsed over time, but, with renewed interest in WW1-era aircraft, perhaps it should now be revived to avoid confusion, at least in discussion of vintage types.
Yeah, my 1973 BMW R75/5 did that too. :P
I heard somewhere that rotary engines didn't have throttles, the rpms were controlled by an on off switch to the ignition, and that they later were deemed impractical because they couldn't grow to big.
Yes, that's pretty much correct.
"an elegant weapon for a more civilized age"
Thats just bad ass .
An ancestor of mine invented that 9 cylinder rotary engine which was used in the WWI camels.
Thanks for clearing this up for those who don't/won't/can't grasp it. :)
Very cool
Which leads directly to aircraft carriers islands are always on the right side of the ship.
Imagine trying to fly that thing with the entire weight of the engine spinning like a gyroscope. No wonder more pilots died learning to fly it.
What a beauty....
One wild air plane wow love it
That is a nice looking airplane
Snoopy is one brave little dog.
Cool aircraft.
The torque from the engine is amazing
For a short time, they were the most deadly plane on the planet.
Good hand brake!
It is not the torque, it is the rotating mass!
That's a lot of power for a paper airplane.
A classic aircraft.
WOW, the torque on that engine....
Total rock n roll Early Days
Guy then shuts the engine off, climbs out and said" Alright cool! Thats as close to flying as I like to be!!" And walked away...
Snoopy circled back to check his kill....what more is there to say? Na da !
Just think, the first flight was in 1903. And 14 years later the camel was dogfighting over Europe.
It'd not the torque, it's the weigh and imbalance of the engine. The Sopwith Camel's engine and prop turn while the crank is held stationary. Being hand/prop started, the weight of the engine gave it the inertia to start easier than just the weight of the propeller. It wasn't until later that they figured out it was easier to balance a prop than an entire engine. Besides the later inline engines wouldn't be able to be balanced to be used in the same manner.