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 Aviation Company were bought by a new company H.G. Hawker Engineering . The Sopwith Aviation Company (based at Brooklands) was created in June 1912 by Thomas Octave Murdoch (Tommy, later Sir Thomas) Sopwith, a wealthy sportsman interested in aviation, yachting and motor-racing, when he was 24 years old. 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. An early collaboration with the S. E. Saunders boatyard of East Cowes on the