Herbert Smith designed the Sopwith F.1 as a successor to the docile Pup, but the aeroplane that emerged from the Kingston works in December 1916 was anything but docile. Harry Hawker flew the prototype on 22 December 1916 at Brooklands; by June 1917 the first production machines reached No. 4 Squadron, Royal Naval Air Service, near Dunkirk. The Camel was compact, heavy in the nose, and brutally sensitive. Ninety per cent of its weight—engine, pilot, guns, and fuel—lay within the front seven feet, and the massive gyroscopic torque of its rotary engine meant that an unwary pilot could spin into the ground before he knew what had happened. Yet those same vices became virtues in combat. The Camel could snap-turn inside any German scout except the Fokker Dr.I, and its twin synchronised Vickers guns, belt-fed and firing through the propeller arc, delivered a withering stream of .303 fire. By war’s end, pilots flying Camels had been credited with 1,294 victories—more than any other Allied aircraft. Canadian ace Billy Barker alone scored forty-six kills in a single Camel, serial B6313, the highest tally attributed to one airframe in the war. Approximately 5,490 Camels of all variants were built, including the shipboard 2F.1 and the Comic night fighter. It was a killer, a champion, and, in the right hands, the most lethal fighting machine of 1917.