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Product History:
Royal Aircraft Factory - S.E.5a
 
Only 77 original S.E.5 aircraft were built before production settled on the improved S.E.5a. The S.E.5a differed from late production examples of the S.E.5 only in the type of engine installed - a geared 200 hp Hispano-Suiza 8b, often turning a large clockwise-rotation four-bladed propeller, replacing the 150 hp model. In total 5,265 S.E.5s were built by six manufacturers: Austin Motors (1,650), Air Navigation and Engineering Company (560), Curtiss (1), Martinsyde (258), the Royal Aircraft Factory (200), Vickers (2,164) and Wolseley Motor Company (431).[2] A few were converted as two-seat trainers and there were plans for Curtiss to build 1,000 S.E.5s in the United States but only one was completed before the end of the war. At first, airframe construction outstripped the very limited supply of French-built Hispano-Suiza engines and squadrons earmarked to receive the new fighter had to soldier on with Airco DH 5s and Nieuport 24s until early 1918. The troublesome geared "-8b" model was prone to have serious gear reduction system problems, sometimes with the propeller (and even the entire gearbox on a very few occasions) separating from the engine and airframe in flight.
 
The introduction of the 200 hp (149 kW) Wolseley Viper, a high-compression, direct drive version of the Hispano-Suiza 8a made under licence by the Wolseley Motor Company, solved the S.E.5a's engine problems and was adopted as the standard powerplant.
 
About 38 of the Austin-built S.E.5as were assigned to the American Expeditionary Force with the 25th Aero Squadron getting its aircraft (mostly armed only with the fuselage-mounted Vickers gun) at the very end of the war.