Combination of cut and paste problem and a url with a space in it that got line wrapped... Sorted now.
There's a plane in there?
As much as I like vintage aircraft, wasn't the Swordfish an embarrassment to British aviation? An aged biplane in a monoplane war? A sad tribute to the bureaucrats at the Admiralty?
Of course I could be wrong. I wish them good luck with the recovery project.
Well a Swordfish bagged the Bismark, not all that embarrassing surely!
Good point, RAB. But how did the Swordfish, a good-looking plane, compare to the Japanese Kate/Jill series or the American Devastator/Avenger aircraft? It seemed like a throwback compared to the Spitfires and Hurricanes that we Yanks are familiar with.
Dunno, Spectre765. What I do know is my old man thought they were good carrier planes and he flew them for 3 years on the Arctic convoys and elsewhere.
The Swordfish was a torpedo bomber with a very low stall speed which made it an ideal carrier aircraft for the time and, particularly, for Arctic work when landings took place on a deck which rose up and down by 60 feet. Spitfires and Hurricanes were (almost entirely) land based fighter aircraft with a very different role.
I cleared out my mother's house a couple of weeks ago and kept a very dogeared copy of "War in a Stringbag" which I'm looking forward to reading. You can probably find a copy on ebay. I suggest you read it before judging that Stringbag battle honours were an embarrassment to British aviation. The alternative view is that they represented one of the greatest chapters in naval airborne warfare. But then I'm prejudiced.
Postwar, Swordfish were even equipped with radar:
http://11uboat.net/allies/aircraft/photos/swordfish.jpg
A minor point; there is no Digy County in Nova Scotia. There is, however, a Digby County.
And that is not to mention the kerfuffle at Taranto.,,
That's right, Dale. Taranto and the Stringbag put the skids to the battleship, which was then dead before almost anyone knew it.
Great to see one of these found and restored. Hopefully, they'll take it on a tour after it's restored.
Nowadays Navies use frigate based helicopters for anti shipping strike. The helos probably don't perform that much differently from the Swordfish it's just that they have stand off missiles.
