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 B.1 tractor biplane, powered by a 200 hp (149 kW) Hispano-Suiza water-cooled engine. Unlike the Cuckoo, the bomber's two-bay wings did not fold. It was designed as a single-seat aircraft, with the pilot sitting in a cockpit under the wing centre section to give a good view forwards and downwards for bombing. The aircraft bombload of up to 560 lb (255 kg) was carried vertically within the fuselage, in cells behind the pilot. While no orders followed from either the Admiralty, whose needs for a single-engined bomber had been met by the Airco DH.4 or the Royal Flying Corps, Sopwith obtained