Martinsydes?

[RLWP]

Can anyone provide some background on Martinsyde aircraft?

So far I have got from Janes Fighting Aircraft of WW1 the following:

1914 Martinsyde produced a scout with an 80hp Gnome motor. This was "promptly ordered in large quantities by the War Office. It payed an important part in the war until 1915..."

Presumably this is the S1, and was seen off by the Fokker scourge? Janes photo caption has this as "one of the most successful small fighting machines of the 1915-16 campaign" although this might refer to the 100hp Monosoupape motor planes.

This was superseded by a scout with a 120hp Beardmore engine, eventually produced with a 160hp motor.

From info in the Forum I guess these are the G100 and G102 "Elephants"

Janes goes on to say "Since then the firm has produced some of the most valuable fighting machines". "The elephant....was built in hundreds."

Janes also mentions the single F3 with the RR Falcon engine, and the F4 with the 300hp Hispano-Suiza.

Other sites on the web suggest that only 7 F4s were delivered before the armistice, and that only 60 elephants were built.

As Janes account was written in 1919 are they right, or being somewhat jingoistic in an attempt to talk up the British aeroplane industry?

Richard

(Observer hoping to learn from Aces)