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
Sopwith Snark an air-cooled radial engine which had been ordered in large numbers based on promises of high performance and ease of production. Sopwith produced two designs to meet this requirement, a biplane, the Snapper, and a triplane, the Snark. Sopwith received orders for three prototypes each of the Snapper and Snark, as well as orders for 300 of a Dragonfly powered version of the Snipe, the Sopwith Dragon. The Snark had a wooden monocoque fuselage like that of the Sopwith Snail lightweight fighter, and had equal span single-bay wings with ailerons on each wing. The wings had unequal spacing and stagger,