Fighter aircraft use "C" (Nieuport 17 C.1). Although the term "fighter" specifies aircraft designed to shoot down other aircraft, such designs are often also useful as multirole fighter-bombers, strike fighters, and sometimes lighter, fighter-sized tactical ground-attack aircraft. This has always been the case, for instance the Sopwith Camel and other "fighting scouts" of World War I performed a great deal of ground-attack work. In World War II, the USAAF and RAF often favored fighters over dedicated light bombers or dive bombers, and types such as the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt and Hawker Hurricane that were no longer competitive as aerial combat fighters were
Sopwith Atlantic flying boats, with John Cyril Porte selected to be the pilot, the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 put a stop to these plans. Following the Armistice ending the War on 11 November 1918, the competition was reopened, Thomas Sopwith, the head of the Sopwith Aviation Company decided to build an aircraft to compete for the prize. George Carter of Sopwith-based his design for the transatlantic aircraft on the single-engined Sopwith B.1 bomber aircraft. It was a large, two-bay biplane powered by a Rolls-Royce Eagle engine in a tractor configuration. It had a deeper fuselage than the