Westland Wagtail Westland Wagtail The Westland Wagtail was a prototype British fighter aircraft of the First World War. A single-engined tractor biplane, the Wagtail was a failure owing to the unreliability of its engine, only five being built. The Westland Wagtail was designed by Westland Aircraft of Yeovil in 1917 to meet the Royal Air Force Specification IA for a light fighter with superior performance to the Sopwith Camel. Westland's design team, led by Robert Bruce, the Company's manager and Arthur Davenport, Chief Draughtsman, came up with a design for a small single bay biplane, powered (like the other competitors for the
Thomas-Morse MB-3 Thomas-Morse MB-3 The Thomas-Morse MB-3 was an open-cockpit biplane fighter primarily manufactured by the Boeing Company for the U.S. Army Air Service in 1922. The MB-3A was the mainstay fighter for the Air Service between 1922 and 1925. In March 1918, the United States Army Air Service requested several American aircraft manufacturers to design a new fighter, to be powered by a water-cooled Wright-Hispano H, a license-built Hispano-Suiza 8, to replace the French-built SPAD XIII. The Thomas-Morse Aircraft Corporation of Ithaca, New York proposed the MB-3, designed by its British-born chief designer B. Douglas Thomas, to meet this requirement, with