Original 103 year old WW1 SE5a & Bristol M1C replica - Shuttleworth Family Airshow 2021

This 103 year old SE5a is the only original airworthy example of its type. It is owned and operated by The Shuttleworth Collection from their airfield at Old Warden and has a combat record.
Built by Wolseley Motors and powered by a Wolseley Viper 200 engine, it flew with 84 Squadron Royal Air Force in France in November 1918. It was in combat on 10th November, the day before the armistice, flown by Major Charles Edward Murray Pickthorn MC, the squadron commander, when he destroyed a Fokker D.VII in the vicinity of Chimay, Belgium.
After WW1 it was bought, with others, by Major J C Savage for his skywriting business, registered G-EBIA and used from 1924 to 1928. It was then put into store.

In 1955 it was recovered from inside the roof of the Armstrong Whitworth flight shed at Baginton and restored for The Shuttleworth Collection by staff and apprentices at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough. It flew again in August 1959 fitted with a geared Hispano Suiza. The crankshaft of this engine sheared in flight in 1975 and the aircraft was rebuilt with a 200hp Wolseley Viper.

The SE5a was extensively refurbished in 2007 and is now displayed back in the colours and markings of 84 Squadron, with its original code of
F-904.

The Royal Aircraft Factory SE5 (Scout Experimental 5) was developed in response to a call from the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) for a fighter that was superior to the enemy’s machines. Powered by the new 150 hp Hispano-Suiza water-cooled engine, the first of three prototypes flew on 22nd November 1916. Two of the prototypes crashed during testing. After appropriate modifications, the SE5 entered service with 56 Squadron in March 1917 and deployed to France in April.
Pilots liked the SE5 for its handling qualities and strength, but the aircraft was underpowered. It was re-equipped with a more powerful 200 hp engine and re-designated the SE5a.
It was less agile than the Sopwith Camel at lower levels, but faster with a better overall performance at altitude. Armed with only one synchronised .303-in Vickers machine gun, against the Camel’s two, the SE5a also had a wing-mounted Lewis gun so that the pilot could fire at enemy aircraft from below and behind. It could also carry 4 x 18kg Cooper bombs.
From June 1917, more units were equipped with the aircraft but it was not until well into 1918 that it was available in the required numbers. By the end of WW1, 21 British and 2 US squadrons operated the SE5a.
Many Allied aces flew the aircraft – Albert Ball achieved 17 of 44 victories flying the SE5 and the SE5a was flown by Bishop, Mannock and McCudden.
77 SE5s were built before the advent of the SE5a, of which 5,000 were made.

This Bristol M1C Monoplane Scout 'Bullet' is a replica, owned and operated by the Shuttleworth Collection. It represents machine C4918 - one of eight Bristol M1Cs of 'C' Flight, 72 Squadron, RAF at Mirjana, Mesopotamia (north of Baghdad in what is now Iraq) in the Spring of 1918, when they flew reconnaissance and fighter missions from a number of Landing Grounds in the area.

The Bristol M.1A Scout Monoplane was produced by Bristol as a private venture, flying for the first time at Filton on 14th July 1916.

Designed by Frank Barnwell, it featured shoulder-mounted wire braced monoplane wings and a large domed prop spinner closely faired to the circular cowling of its 110 hp Clerget rotary engine. This was mounted at the front of a faired circular-section fuselage.

Barnwell had identified during the opening years of World War 1 that existing biplanes lacked performance and he specifically configured a circular cross-section fuselage of wooden and fabric construction for maximum speed. The M.1A could achieve 132 mph and climb to 10,000 ft in 8 minutes 30 seconds. The only real criticism made by the War Office Evaluation pilots was poor forward and downward vision.

Four modified M.1B's were ordered with a pyramidical cabane structure and Vickers machine gun mounted in the port wing root, although the design was rejected for use on the Western Front due to its landing speed, which at 49mph was too fast for the majority of the French airfields. Despite it being up to 50mph faster than any enemy aircraft in the sky at the time, many also considered it inherently unsafe in combat.

The RFC imposed a ban on monoplanes after the crash of a Bristol Coanda monoplane and despite the 1913 Monoplane Committee clearing the type, the deep-rooted suspicion of single wing aeroplanes continued.

The production aircraft, of which 125 were ordered on 3rd August 1917, were the M.1C with a 110 hp Le Rhône engine and a single forward-firing Vickers gun mounted on the centreline. As a result of the lack of acceptance on the Western Front, the type was operationally based mainly overseas, flying in the Balkans and Middle East and in use in countries such as Chile.

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