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Sir Thomas Octave Murdoch Sopwith, CBE, Hon FRAeS (18 January 1888 – 27 January 1989) was a British aviation pioneer, businessman and .
On 30 July 1898, when he was ten years old and on a family holiday at the Isle of Lismore near Oban in Scotland, a gun lying across young Thomas's knee went off, killing his father. This accident haunted Sopwith for the rest of his life.
Sopwith was interested in motor cycles, and he took part in the 100-mile Tricar trial in 1904, where he was one of four medal winners.. He also tried ballooning, his first ascent being in Charles Rolls balloon in June 1906.. Together with Phil Paddon, he bought his own balloon from Short Brothers. For a while, he was in business with Phil Paddon selling automobiles as Paddon & Sopwith on Albemarle Street in Piccadilly, London.
In his youth, he was an expert Ice skating and played in Goaltender during the Princes Ice Hockey Club's 1908 match with C.P.P. Paris and during the 1909–10 season. He was also a member of the Great Britain national ice hockey team that won the gold medal at the first European Championships in 1910.
On 18 December 1910, Sopwith won the £4000 Baron de Forest Prize for the longest flight from England to the Continent in a British-built aeroplane, flying 169 miles (272 km) in 3 hours 40 minutes. He used the winnings to set up the Sopwith School of Flying at Brooklands.
On 28 June 1911, as the RMS Olympic was leaving New York City on her eastbound maiden voyage, Sopwith flew up to the Olympic, intending to drop a package of last minute supplies destined for passenger Washington Atlee Burpee. However, the package narrowly missed the deck, falling into the Hudson River.
In June 1912, Sopwith, along with Fred Sigrist and others, set up the Sopwith Aviation Company, initially at Brooklands.. On 24 October 1912 using a Wright Model B completely rebuilt by Sopwith and fitted with an ABC Motors 40 hp engine,. Harry Hawker took the British Michelin Endurance prize with a flight of 8h 23m.
Sopwith Aviation got its first military aircraft order in November 1912, and in December moved to larger premises in Canbury Park Road, Kingston upon Thames. The site of the factory is now a private gated housing estate. A small section of the original building still exists at the junction of Elm Crescent and Canbury Park Road; white painted bay windows can be seen extending from the building to allow as much light as possible to enter the large room in which Sopwith made blueprints for his aircraft designs.
The company produced more than 18,000 World War I aircraft for the allied forces, including 5747 of the Sopwith Camel single-seat fighter. Sopwith was awarded the CBE in 1918.
Bankrupted after the war by punitive anti-profiteering taxes and a failed venture into motorcycle manufacturing, he re-entered the aviation business in 1920 with a new firm named after his chief engineer and test pilot, Harry Hawker. Sopwith became chairman of the new firm, Hawker Aircraft.
He became a Knight Bachelor in 1953. After the nationalisation in 1977 of the aviation interests of what was by then Hawker Siddeley, he continued to work as a consultant to the company until 1980.
In 1979, Sopwith was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame at the San Diego Air & Space Museum.Sprekelmeyer, Linda, editor. These We Honor: The International Aerospace Hall of Fame. Donning Co. Publishers, 2006. . He was a member of the Air Squadron flying club.
In 1927 Sopwith commissioned yacht builders Camper and Nicholsons to build a luxury motor yacht he named Vita. She was sold in 1929 to Sir John Shelley-Rolls who renamed her Alastor.. During World War II the Royal Navy commandeered her to ferry provisions to Navy vessels moored at the entrance to Strangford Lough. In 1946 a fire gutted her and she sank in Ringhaddy Sound in Strangford Lough..
In 1937 Sopwith received the yacht HNoMY Norge, also built for him by Camper and Nicholsons. In the Second World War the ship was requisitioned by the Royal Navy and used as a convoy escort vessel, HMS Philante. After the war the vessel was returned to Sopwith and he sold her to Norway in 1947, to become the royal yacht of the King of Norway.
Sopwith's house in Mayfair at No. 46 Green Street, where he lived from 1934 until 1940, has a blue plaque. In 1940, he moved to Warfield Hall in Berkshire, which he had acquired the previous year.
Sopwith's 100th birthday was marked by a flypast of military aircraft over his home, Compton Manor in King's Somborne, Hampshire. He died in Hampshire on 27 January 1989, nine days after his 101st birthday. His grave and that of his second wife (Phyllis Brodie) are in the churchyard of All Saints Church, Little Somborne, near Winchester.
A bronze bust of Sopwith was unveiled by his son at Kingston Library, London, on 26 September 2014. The sculptor was Ambrose Barber, a former executive of Hawker. Earlier in the same year, a plaque was unveiled at Canbury Gardens in Kingston upon Thames by Sopwith's son to commemorate the Sopwith aviation company.
Sopwith Way in Kingston upon Thames was named after Thomas Sopwith. Sopwith Road, one of the roads built on the site of the former Heston Aerodrome, is also named after him. Sopwith Road in Warfield (Bracknell, Berkshire), located close to his former home Warfield Hall and the location of the newly built Woodhurst school (part of Warfield CE Primary School), is also named after him.
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