It was designed in 1917 by Fred Murphy, who was the new chief designer at Armstrong Whitworth as a private venture powered by a 230hp Bentley BR2 rotary engine. Even if the design met the requierements of the Air Board Specification A1(a) for a replacement for the Sopwith Camel, it was built to test the skills of the Armstrong Whitworth new design team, and wasn't considered as a serious contender for the requirement. However, Armstrong Whitworth was granted a license to build to prototypes.
It was a two-bay biplane with a square section fuselage. The engine, located in the nose, a rotary 230hp Bentley BR2 was enclosed by a circular cowl with a deep hump above the cowl where the armament, a pair of 0.303 Vickers machine guns, was fitted.
It flew for the first time in April 1918 and it wasn't accepted into formal evaluation by the Air Ministry, which criticised the poor view from the cockpit. Anyway, when the Armadillo was already being evaluated, the Sopwith Snipe, which was powered by the same engine and was faster was already in large scale production and had been combat tested, so Murphy abandoned the Armadillo and instead concentrated on the more advanced Ara.
Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armstrong_Whitworth_Armadillo
2. Salamander Books - The Complete Book of Fighters
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