In 1918 the Germans had a wide range of new fighter, bomber, and strike aircraft being introduced to turn the air war. However, the Allies were quickly trying to get new aircraft into the skies to combat them. One sad case was the Sopwith Snipe vs the Martinsyde Buzzard. Martinsyde had a new F.3 fighter that used the same engine as the F.2, so there was a delay as no engines were alotted. Quickly, Martinsyde developed the F.4 Buzzard that was a very high speed aircraft for the time (150 mph) using a new 300 hp Hispana-Suiza engine. It had superb handling, was easy to fly, greater height, and good armament. But the engine delay caused the RAF to go with the Sopwith Snipe which came from the Camel line. It was only marginally better than the Camel and inferior to the Buzzard. But b/c it was availbale earlier and was cheaper, it made it into combat, scoring many kills. The Buzzard was just about ready for combat when the Armistice was signed and all further production was halted at 370 machines out of 1450 ordered plus thousands more for export! The Snipe was adopted postwar as the first fighter while Martinsyde had to hastily convert the fighter into civilian applications and by 1924 went bankrupt. A sad fate for a fine fighter that would have been equalt to the Germans Fokker D.VIII, Pfalz D.XII, and SSW D.IV...

Sopwith Snipe: http://www.buscinfo.com/EZ-PhotoAlbum/Album09_WWIAcft/Sopwith_Snipe.jpg Martinsyde Buzzard: http://1000aircraftphotos.com/Contributions/McBrideBill/8858L.jpg