Following their first military aircraft sale in November 1912, Sopwith moved to the company's first factory premises which opened that December in a recently closed roller skating rink in Canbury Park Road near Kingston Railway Station in South West London.

Towards the end of the war, Sopwith took out a lease on National Aircraft Factory No.2, constructed in 26 weeks during the winter of 1917 a mile to the north of the Canbury works in Ham.

Hawker and its successors produced many more famous military aircraft, including the inter-war Hart, and Demon; World War II's Hurricane, Typhoon, and Tempest; and the post-war Sea Fury, Hunter and Harrier.

This aircraft, better known as the 1½ Strutter due to its unconventional cabane strut arrangement, was used from 1916 by the RNAS, RFC and the French Aviation Militaire as a single-seat bomber, two-seat fighter and artillery spotter and trainer.

[9] The Pup and 1½ Strutter were the first successful British tractor fighters equipped with a synchronisation gear to allow a machine gun to fire through the rotating propeller.

The Pup was widely used on the Western Front by the RFC and from ships by the RNAS from the autumn of 1916 to the early summer of 1917, and was considered a delight to fly by its pilots.

The Pup began the famous series of animal-named Sopwith aircraft during the war, which, as a whole, would become renowned in aviation history as "The Flying Zoo".

Experimentally equipped with three narrow-chord wings and a more powerful engine, the Pup led to the Triplane, which was used by just four squadrons of the RNAS during 1917, but became well known for its startling fighting qualities, put to best use by Raymond Collishaw's famous 'Black Flight' of 'Naval 10' (No.

The Snipe saw little wartime service, being issued only in small numbers to the Front, but William George Barker, the Canadian ace, won a Victoria Cross flying one in an epic single-handed dogfight against enormous odds.

Towards the end of the war, the company produced the Cuckoo torpedo-bomber and the Salamander armoured ground-attack development of the Snipe, but these types were too late to see action.

Following World War I, the Sopwith Snipe was chosen as the standard fighter of the much-reduced Royal Air Force, and soldiered on until finally replaced in the late 1920s.