Sopwith Land Clerget Tractor (LCT) aka Admiralty Type 9400 and 9700 "Strutter"***FINISHED***

[PeterB]

Or in other words the two seat Sopwith 1¹/₂ Strutter as it became generally known.

 

 

Considering it was quite an important type with something like 1500 built in the UK and a further 4000 in France the Strutter has not been very well represented in kit form, A couple of vac forms, limited run kits by Merlin, Pegasus and one other company called Flashback, and what looks like quite a decent version by Czech Master Resin  all seem to have been released in the 1980/90's so in order to represent this plane I resorted originally to following the conversion printed in the February 1981 Airfix Mag cross-kitting the RE8 and Avro 504K. They also did a Bristol Scout conversion of the 504.

 

 

Showing its age now after 40 years of pipe smoke, but other than some rather wide and wonky interplane struts (ex RE8 I think) it seems pretty close in appearance to the EE 2 seater. And before anybody points it out I now realise I have used late war white outlined roundels which it probably did not carry! A few years later I picked up a batch of Merlin kits including their Strutter, and started building it as a Type 9700 single seater - incidentally the Admiralty Type numbers are the serials of the last plane in the first batch of each type. This is as far as I got and it is clear which parts have been exposed to the smoke!

I 

 

Having finally completed the Rumpler C.III or was it the C.IV I bought as part of the batch of Merlin kits I may just have a crack at this one now as well, having the EE kit as a template for the struts.

 

More later.

 

Pete

 

[JOCKNEY]

Looks terrific Pete, good luck mate 

 

Cheers Pat 

[Andwil]

2 hours ago, PeterB said:

They also did a Bristol Scout conversion of the 504.

I did that conversion and still have it somewhere, I’ll see if I can dig it out.

 

AW

[PeterB]

13 hours ago, Andwil said:

I did that conversion and still have it somewhere, I’ll see if I can dig it out.

 

AW

I ended up with an Aeroclub Scout instead. Oddly enough I have never actually built the 504 kit as such as an inter war trainer did not really appeal to me back then - the boxing available at the time was the silver trainer flying over the pyramids. Maybe if we have another Airfix GB I might see if I can pick one up and perhaps do it as one of the home defence versions..

 

Pete

Edited December 20, 2024 by PeterB

[PeterB]

Toko released 4 boxings of the "Strutter", a two seat scout, 2 seat trainer, single seat bomber and the single seat Home Defence "interceptor" version which, like the later Camel modified for the same purpose seems to have acquired the nickname "Comic" though I have no idea why. I am building the two seat scout, and will explain the history later.

 

I painted the parts a few years back so now I have started the assembly of the interior.

 

 

As you can see they provide a "frame" on which the seat and controls are mounted - only the front stick and pedals are fitted in this version. A little touching up to do and then I will assemble the fuselage.

 

So, a little more history.

 

Given the state of the art during WWI, aircraft companies seem to have in many cases adopted what one of my Uni Lecturers called the “suck it and see” approach – I have for instance seen reports of a new aircraft being sent for testing, proving not quite right, and returning only a few days later with a new set of wings or some other structural modification. It is therefore hardly surprising that there is a strong “family resemblance” between successive designs in many cases – it could for example be said that the Sopwith Triplane looks very much like a Pup fuselage with extra wings.

 

In the case of the Strutter, the design seems to have had its origins in something nicknamed “The Sigrist Bus” after Fred Sigrist, the engineer Sopwith originally employed to work on his speedboats, who then progressed to being Works Manager at Sopwith Aviation, and who eventually became one of the partners in the new H.G. Hawker Engineering Ltd founded when the Sopwith company was wound up in 1920. This aircraft was a small 2 seater designed in late 1914 and when it first flew in June 1915 in the hands of Harry Hawker it set a new British altitude record. From then on it was used as a “runabout” and later it seems it was used as a basis for the enlarged LCT two seat scout. Given the span of the wings a two bay arrangement would have been the norm, but both the “Bus” and the LCT used instead an arrangement where relatively long struts ran from the bottom of the cabane struts outboard to the lower wing, the whole assembly resembling the “W” shape of the later Warren Truss as seen in the later Fiat biplanes designed by Celestino Rosatelli, and it was this arrangement that led to the nickname by which the plane was commonly known. I have seen a suggestion it may have been inspired by the fact that the Nieuport “Sesquiplanes” had “one and a half wings”.

 

The diagram below shows what I mean.

 

 

It also clarifies the rigging terminology for me as I never knew the difference between "flying wires" and "landing wires"

 

More background as I go along.

 

Pete

Edited December 20, 2024 by PeterB

[PeterB]

Fuselage joined up and both the tail and lower wing added.

 

 

The wing is a butt joint which is far from ideal but  fortunately the plastic takes  glue very well. After the usual struggle getting everything correctly aligned and the dihedral set up  I reinforced the joint with thin CA and once the upper wing/struts/rigging are in place it should be fairly strong. The Merlin single seater in the background is actually very similar in proportion though the gap between the trailing  edge of the wing and the  leading edge of horizontal tail is a couple of mm less.

 

So, on with the story.  The advent of the Fokker Eindekker with a fixed forward firing synchronised gun in the later half of 1915 was a major problem for the Allied air forces. Though not a particularly good plane itself as it was slow and clumsy, a belt-fed gun in front of the pilot shooting through the arc of the prop proved deadly to the slow and poorly defended recce planes and bombers then in use, By the start of 1916 things were improving as the British introduced the D.H. 2 and the French the Nieuport 11 but neither were ideal. The DH was a pusher and rather slow, armed with a flexible Lewis gun in the nose, whilst the Nieuport, although a tractor and both faster and more manoeuvrable, had either a Lewis or Hotchkiss gun on a mounting above the upper wing so aiming it accurately could be slightly problematic. Both suffered from a major problem in that the the gun was drum fed so after a short burst the pilot had to remove the empty drum and replace it with a full one whilst trying at the same time to fly the plane. Even so they managed to reduce the threat from the Eindekkers, though that was soon replaced by the rather better Halberstadt D.II biplane. The RNAS ordered the Sopwith two seater as an escort fighter for their Caudron G 4 and Breguet Bre 4 bombers, both of which were slow pushers with just a single flexible gun for defence, though they did have a decent range and payload for the time. They also ordered some single seaters to use as bombers.

 

The Strutter was the first British plane to be designed to carry a synchronised belt-fed Vickers mg in front of the pilot, and also had a Lewis on a flexible mounting for the observer who sat well behind the pilot with a good field of fire, unlike the poor old BE2c where the observer was in front of the pilot under the wing and surrounded by struts. It had a good range and could be used as an escort or for recce missions, and could also carry a small bomb load, enhanced if the observer was left at home. I have seen various figures quoted for its speed, ranging from 95 to 105 mph, perhaps depending on the engine fitted - it originally had a 110hp Clerget, but later ones had a 130hp version. That made it faster than the Eindekker and the Halberstadt  and the BE and it was rather more manoeuvrable than the latter, though rather less so than a smaller single seater. It did have a couple of problems - the pilot sitting under the wing had limited vision upwards, and in common with many two seaters of the time, the large gap between the front and rear cockpits made communication between the pilot and observer difficult, something that was not really fixed until the advent of the Bristol Fighter.  None the less it proved a success, though by the end of 1916 the advent of the Albatros D types meant that it was becoming obsolescent. The tailplane incidence could be adjusted from the cockpit to allow for different loading such as heavy or light observers apparently, and there were small air-brake panels mounted on the upper trailing edge of the bottom wing alongside the fuselage, which could be raised to slow the plane down when landing.

 

More on the deployment etc next time.

 

 

Pete

 

Correction

 

 I said earlier, that the French Caudron and Breguet bombers, including those use by the British were slow pushers, but although the Caudron G.4 bombers had a similar "pod and tail boom" layout to a pusher biplane they were actually fitted with two small tractor engines, and were somewhat faster than the Breguet but were still fairly slow.

Edited December 23, 2024 by PeterB

[PeterB]

Ok, slight change of plan so instead of ranting on about the plane itself I decided to progress the build and so now we come to the potentially contentious subject of paint! The actual colours used are pretty well known and if we rule out the PC 12 sometimes used by the RNAS, particularly in tropical climes, then the upper surfaces would have by mid 1916 been PC10 and the undersurfaces V114 “doped natural fabric/linen”. The problem is that PC10 is one of those colours, a bit like US WWII Olive Drab, which is subject to much argument, which incidentally I prefer not to get into here!

 

I suppose that to be technically correct I should call it “dope” not “paint” as it was actually a base of clear dope to which a variety of dry pigments were added and mixed in. There were several others in small quantities but the main pigments were lamp/carbon black and yellow ochre and I remember reading a quote by somebody, possibly Bruce Robertson, which said that when those two pigments were mixed the only possible outcome was Brown and yet the colour is often referred to as Green or Khaki. I have also read about something called a “green shift” brought about by the gloss dope/varnish – a effect bit like the colours you see when oil drops into water I gather, and I have also seen the suggestion that it started off green and weathered to brown/khaki as does OD, though not I think to the sort of light brown on the “RFC” planes in the film the Blue Max as I recall.

 

About 20 years ago I was involved in a “discussion” with the research department at the RAF Museum about the “British Aviation Colours of WWII” book published by Arms and Armour Press in their “RAF Museum Series” (the book claimed to have 32 colour chips certified by the Museum but my copy only had 29 so I wondered if they knew what the missing 3 were but apparently the publishers had got that wrong) so I also asked them if they had any thoughts/info on PC10. Perhaps wisely they refused to be drawn on the subject but helpfully sent me copies of a number of articles on the subject including one by Ian Huntley in Scale Aircraft Modelling - see below.

 

 

To cut a long story short it seems there were several versions of “official” PC10 together with a commercially produced clone, and the mix varied over time, for example the yellow ochre was a lot browner in some mixes than others. The actual colour depended on the mix and also the way it and the finishing coats were applied, but when new it was essentially anything from a slightly greenish brown to a very definite brown as I understand it.

 

As to paint I have tried several over the years ranging from the very brown PC10 from the old Precision Paints range, brownish green from Humbrol and Xtracolour and a definite green from Colourcoats (which I no longer have), but digging about in my stock of more than 200 tins of ancient enamel I found these.

 

 

They all looked viable but the Precision PC10 was insufficient to do the current kits, and when I stirred the Humbrol Authentic it seemed to have undergone some sort of chemical change as it was now a “chestnut brown” instead of the brownish green it used to be, so I went for the Hu 108 and the Precision V114. I am now working against the clock because my previous experience with paints like these which must be at least 40 years old is that once opened again they usually dry out within a matter of days. This is how it looks at the moment, and I am waiting for the V114 to dry before adding a second coat – no matter how much you stirred them the old Precision paints usually took days if not weeks to dry so fingers crossed!

 

 

The Hu 108 is one of those paints that change depending on the lighting - essentially a brownish green that can look like a greenish brown, though like the real thing it may change when vanished, whilst the Precision V114 has a slight brown tinge which I prefer to the yellowish Hu 74 "Linen" in the instructions. The Xtracolour "Doped Natural Fabric" is ok but just a bit too "cream" for my tastes and the Colourcoats version was good but I no longer have any.  Incidentally Toko said to use Hu 108 but Eastern Express do not give any paint ref for the green - perhaps because 108 was no longer available. The 108 looks about right to me for the "greener" Scheme A PC10 used in 1916 - I suppose I should go for a browner shade on my late war Snipe but probably won't bother.

 

As with all things, this is my choice of paint based on my own personal "mental picture" of the colours - others may not agree. Preserved examples in museums are not a lot of help as they have either been repainted at least once or have weathered/faded over the 100+ years since they were built, but for what it is worth here is the Bristol Fighter in the Imperial War Museum that I photographed at least 40 years ago - whish I could do props like that!

 

 

Brown or Green?

 

The cowling, nose panels and sometimes the upper decking are usually shown as "Aluminium" or "Battleship Grey", though the one above seems to be blue - some sort of unit marking I suppose like the yellow wheel covers.

 

Pete

Edited December 22, 2024 by PeterB

[Dave Swindell]

25 minutes ago, PeterB said:

Brown or Green?

 

[PeterB]

Thanks Dave

 

As I said, it has been the subject of much discussion and as time goes by I guess it will continue to do so. As the saying goes - "you pays your money and takes your choice", or was it "pick".😄 As mentioned in your linked thread the Hu 155 that Airfix now suggest is not a bad match to how I see the colour either so if my experiment with the old Hu 108 does not work I can always fall back on that as is it still in production. I dare say there are some good Acrylic versions of PC 10 now available, all no doubt claiming to be "authentic"  but I can't be bothered trying to find one that I like. "Paint technology" was still a bit trial and error in those days I suppose, and I gather even the national markings went through a number of changes with at least 3 versions of red/white/blue being used due to fading and other problems. Perhaps that is why there is quite a variation in colour on the WWI period roundel/fin flash decs from different manufacturers, though that may just be poor research or production.

 

Back in the early 1970's I was buying a lot of Precision Paints for my model railway, and when I saw that they were also doing aircraft colours I bought some as they included colours not available elsewhere at the time.

 

 

I could be wrong but I seem to remember that in some of their adverts they claimed that their paint was accurate enough to be used in Museum restorations. I have no idea what if any connection there is between the company back then and the more recent one which seems now to concentrate of railway paints.  Anyway, since the previous post I have actually done a test shot of the Precision PC.10 (both types) and their PC.12

 

 

Working out from the wing root of my old Ki-84 mule we have the lighter "Scheme A" from 1916 , the darker "Scheme "D & E" version from late war, and the PC 12. As mentioned in the Ian Huntley article, in tests the red/brown PC 12 was considered best for protecting the canvas from UV which caused it to rot, but the PC 10 was nearly as good and a better camo colour. PC 12 was probably used on some Snipes sent to the Middle East, and may well have been used as an undercoat on the later silver finish applied to post war planes in that area. It was also quite popular with the RNAS apparently, who seem to have used slightly non standard colours in spite of "official" instructions. There can be no doubt that as far as Precision were concerned PC 10 was Brown even if the colours have changed a bit due to age - I rather think the Scheme A was not quite that light when first I used it, and in fact it now looks like the Humbrol Authentic "Green" after I stirred it yesterday, and would fit well with the generic description "Khaki" used at times for PC 10.

 

Pete

 

 

Edited December 22, 2024 by PeterB

[John Masters]

I've built the Eastern Express kit a couple of times and while there might be some fiddly parts, it always seemed to build up well enough.  I cannot speak to the precision of the measurements, but I thoroughly enjoyed the kit.  Your endeavours are looking very good too!

[Graham Boak]

Precision always were railway paints first. They did little advertising in the model aircraft press and in my experience few people had heard of them.  I don't think that the technology for the enamel paints has changed much except perhaps finer pigments.  Others doubtless will be more fully informed.

[PeterB]

56 minutes ago, Graham Boak said:

Precision always were railway paints first. They did little advertising in the model aircraft press and in my experience few people had heard of them.  I don't think that the technology for the enamel paints has changed much except perhaps finer pigments.  Others doubtless will be more fully informed.

Don't know what they were like initially but these days they seem to be a "one man" operation as their web site currently has apologies for delays due to the chap having problems with his hands - bit like what happened to the chap who ran AIMS I believe but in his case he had to stop as they could not be fixed as I understand it. This chap seems to have had an op and is hopeful of getting back to work soon - good luck to him.

 

Pete

[PeterB]

Second coat on.

 

 

I will now get the engine, cowling and Vickers mg on and then it will be time for the fun to start when I try and get the top wing on. As usual the colours are not quite true in the photo, with both the natural fabric and "PC.10" being a bit more yellow/brown. Rightly or wrongly I have "enlarged" the locating holes on the lower wing to give me a bit more "wriggle room" when aligning the struts.

 

Pete

[PeterB]

Fuselages complete and varnished. 

 

 

No. 4 Wing RNAS took delivery of the first Strutters in around April 1916, initially using them as escorts but sometimes as bombers - with the observer on board they could apparently carry up to 2 x 65lb bombs or equivalent, and that doubled if the observer was left at home. The Admiralty had also ordered some type 9700 single seaters which had the observer's position faired over and converted to an internal bomb bay for up to 4 x 65lb bombs but often only 2 were carried with extra fuel for longer range. No 3 Wing started to form up shortly afterwards but this was delayed due to the RFC and the French persuading the Admiralty to divert some of their production to them, This unit has a claim to being the first "Strategic" bombing force as they targeted powerplants and factories, but that did not last long as the rivalry with the RFC reached the point where the "powers that be" insisted the role (and the planes) should be taken away from the Navy, not that they stopped entirely and after all it was I believe the Admiralty who requested "A bloody paralyser of an aircraft" from Handley Page early in the war, resulting in the O/100 and O/400,  and it was the RNAS who were first to use the type in combat

 

The French decided to mass produce the Strutter but it took a long time to gear up production and many were produced after the design had actually become obsolescent (shades of the "BE2 scandal"). There were also complaints that it delayed production of more modern French types such as the Breguet 14. Several hundred French produced Strutters were transferred to the Americans and some to the Russians, who probably built around 100 themselves. After the Albatros D types appeared at the end of 1916 the Strutter faced increasingly difficult challenges but soldiered on for a while. Some ended up as trainers, whilst a few were converted into single seat night fighters by moving the pilot back into the observer's cockpit and fitting one or two Lewis guns to fire over the top wing. The RN also used some as "Ship's Strutters" for experimental flying from large warships, taking off from platforms mounted on gun turrets. A few continued in use both with the RN and USN after the war.

 

Pete

Edited December 26, 2024 by PeterB

[PeterB]

As an aside, I am thinking of building a Roden Gotha over in the Ukraine GB and I have just noticed that the box art depicts a flight of G.IV being attacked by a pair of Stutter fighters!

 

 

 

Pete

Edited December 28, 2024 by PeterB

[PeterB]

My first attempt at getting the top wing on the old Merlin Strutter just using the 4 outer interplane struts initially failed due to the flexibility of the Contrail strutting I cut for the job using the E.E kit as a pattern, but the second attempt with the strutting and the "V" cabane struts I made from bent brass tubing worked.

 

 

The wing geometry is not perfect and the wings don't look quite parallel, but that may be down to the angle of the upper wing which I made many years ago by gluing together the outer sections with the centre section of my choice. Anyway it will do and once everything is dry I will add the diagonal struts which gave rise to the nickname. Hopefully the E.E kit will be less problematic.

 

Pete

[PeterB]

"Half" struts on so ready to start rigging.

 

 

I will try and get the wing on the E-E kit now.

 

Pete

[PeterB]

And then there were two!

 

 

As usual I have added some simplified rigging - just single flying wires, landing wires and incidence wires to be precise, though I have left off the forward flying wires for the moment until the undercarriage is on as they run to the top of the front u/c leg. I don't bother with control cable runs or drag wires and may not add the tail bracing wires as they will make handling tricky. Before I put the u/c on I will have a shot at some of the decals though given their age that could be a problem.

 

Pete

[Andwil]

What do you use for your rigging Pete?

 

AW

[PeterB]

14 hours ago, Andwil said:

What do you use for your rigging Pete?

 

AW

Good question AW. Over the 60+ years I have been modelling I have tried several solutions. Many of my very early biplanes were not rigged at all, but I did use some black cotton thread on my Revell Fokker Eindekker back in the 1960's and borrowed some "Invisible Mending Thread" from my Mother's sewing box for my Morane "Bullet".  When I built the Revell DH2 I used stretched sprue, and went on to use this on several later kits of "large biplanes" such as the Swordfish and Heyford but found it was a bit fragile and did not stand up well to dusting etc.  When I started building biplanes again early this century I started using some E-Z Line elastic thread  which was fine when I could drill holes through the wings on my Albacore, and on the Airfix HP O/400 where the wings were split into upper and lower sections, but I had difficulty gluing the thread in place on smaller planes in short lengths, so when I read a build thread by another modeller a few years back where he used wire, I thought I would give that a try, and since then I have used Albion Alloys nickel silver rod. The 0.1mm stuff would probably have been nearer scale but was too thin and bendy so I use the 0.2mm wire which is rigid enough to be fairly easy to glue in place, and it has the advantage of helping to stiffen up the wing assembly a bit, but the disadvantages are that it is silver and shiny. Painting it is too fiddly and I don't bother - another modeller did suggest  anodising it, though I have not tried that. Once painted/sprayed with flattish varnish the shine is reduced somewhat and from a distance it does not look too bad. With my failing eyesight and shaky hands, rigging can be a chore, and I am not looking forward to my Gotha, but after that I only have 3 more biplanes in my stash - a Nieuport 11, BE.2c and the I-153 for the Heller GB.

 

Anyway, the decs are on.

 

 

I have found that both kit and AM decs for RFC/RAF planes in WWI and also between the wars tend to have a pretty wide variation in the shades of red and blue, whether intentionally or due to production problems. For example here are two Eastern Express versions-

 

 

And here are two supposedly identical old Microscale sheets bought a few years apart -

 

 

I seem to remember reading an article that said there were several, possibly 3, changes to the paint used for the national markings between 1914 and 1918, though that was at least in part due to the fact that the early versions faded very rapidly. However another source does say that the red and blue were made "brighter" in 1916, presumably to make them stand out more on dark finishes such as PC10. Also, complaints about lack of contrast later in the war resulted in a thin white outline being painted round the roundels on the top wing and fuselage, though that does not apply to my Strutters.

 

So, next up is adding the undercarriages.

 

Pete

 

Edited January 22 by PeterB

[PeterB]

In the early 1990's I bought 3 Merlin short run injection WWI biplane kits - a Rumpler C.IV, Vickers FB.5 Gunbus and a Sopwith "Strutter" and got as far as finishing the fuselage and lower wing before the thought of using Contrail struts put me off. They lingered unfinished until the "Not my Comfort Zone" GB in 2023 when I completed the Rumpler, together with a Pegasus FB.5 which replaced the cruder Merlin one. Now I have finally finished the Strutter.

 

 

There is a photo of this aircraft, Admiralty type 9700 serial N5107 in the Windsock book, and the caption says it entered service with 3 Wing RNAS in October 1916, and was declared unserviceable in May 1917, being struck off in August of that year.

 

I have also finisher the E-E kit of a Type 9400 two seater serial 9407.

 

 

There is also a photo of this machine in another Windsock book and the caption says it was also delivered to 3 Wing RNAS at the end of May 1916 and remained with them until late April 1917, being struck off charge in June of that year. Apparently it was flown by the future Canadian ace Raymond Collishaw in September 1916 - Collishaw is better know for leading the Triplanes of Black Flight of Naval 8. It also features in one of the colour profiles where it is incorrectly stated it was flown by Collishaw in September 1917, by which time he had left the unit as had the aircraft, so presumably a "typo", which Toko seem to have also repeated in their original instructions, though E-E just say flown by Collishaw with no date.

 

3 Wing used multi-coloured geometric designs on their planes to identify which flight they belonged to, hence the red diamonds and red and blue circles/discs presumably.

 

So they now join the queue for a spray of varnish along with the Snipe and will be in the gallery before long.

 

Pete

[81-er]

Nicely done, Pete

 

James

[PeterB]

Sprayed and in the gallery.

 

Pete

[JOCKNEY]

Congratulations Pete

They look the business 

Cheers Pat